


The Winchester Supremacy

by zubeneschamali



Series: The Bourne Trilogy [3]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: M/M, doctor!Jared, spy!Jensen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:42:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 110,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22430512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zubeneschamali/pseuds/zubeneschamali
Summary: Sequel to The Winchester Identity. Jared and Jensen are trying to get on with their new lives under witness protection. But a simple request for assistance pulls them into a complicated and dangerous world, bringing back ghosts from the past and threatening to break them apart.
Relationships: Jensen Ackles/Jared Padalecki
Series: The Bourne Trilogy [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1614190
Comments: 264
Kudos: 122





	1. Book 1 (Morro Bay), Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel time, woo-hoo! This time around, it's not based on either the book or the movie of the same title. It's about what happens _after_ the good guys ride off into the sunset, and so it's set after all previous timestamps (except the last one). It's more of a crossover with SPN than "The Winchester Identity" was--remember that the Winchesters did exist in this 'verse--but I promise that J2 will not be doing any salting and burning. 
> 
> There are two people I need to thank the most for making this fic happen: kasman for being my trustworthy beta from Day 1 of this fic, and cherie_morte for reading the whole thing in a very short time and leaving delightful doses of snark along with her perceptive comments. Thanks to you both for the work you put into this; I appreciate it so much.
> 
> I also need to thank everyone who has encouraged me to keep going though comments and tweets: katbcoll has been there from the first chapter of the original, plus dugindeep, deirdre_c, weimar27, jesseofthenorth, wendy, mizface, whitereflection, harrigan, marziebarz, and other people I'm probably forgetting. You all rock!
> 
> I'll try to post a chapter every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, though sometimes life gets in the way. Hope you enjoy!

The mingled scents of sage and eucalyptus greeted Jared as he turned the corner and drove onto his street. When he'd first arrived on the California coast, the smells had been exotic and strange, but by now they had become familiar, even if they didn't quite feel like home.

Truth be told, that could be said of a lot of his new life. 

It wasn't the same as the old one, but it was what he had, and if some days were bitter reminders that he was living under witness protection and would probably never see his sister and his old friends again, other days were almost good. Like today: setting a kid's broken leg at the clinic, warning him about the dangers of climbing over the rocks at the edge of the ocean by himself, and getting a sheepish acknowledgment along with copious amounts of gratitude from both kid and parent.

He'd also gotten an invitation to a chat over coffee from his patient's mother, but he'd quickly let her knew that while he appreciated it, he was very much taken. Maybe he and Jensen needed to get rings or something so people wouldn't think they were single.

Rings. Jared pulled the car into the garage and turned it off. He sat there for a moment, thinking. They'd been under witness protection in Morro Bay for eight months now. At first it had been a confusing mix of the thrill of a new relationship and the awkwardness of getting-to-know-each-other inside a small house that was jointly theirs. Jared had been pleased to realize that with his memory mostly back, Jensen was pretty much the same person as the one Jared had fallen for on their long run across Europe: charming, funny, and sarcastic, but also a deeply caring man with a strong sense of justice. 

He still got upset when he couldn't remember something that should be obvious, despite Jared's attempts to tell him it didn't matter. And his reflexes were still good enough that Jared had learned the hard way to always approach him from the front and to avoid quick motions as much as he could. Jensen had improved, but there was still wariness in his eyes sometimes, and every night he checked all of the doors and windows before coming to bed. It had gotten to be a ritual that Jared found comforting, knowing that the man who had protected him when they were running for their lives was still doing so.

It wasn't a perfect new life, though. Jared got frustrated on an almost daily basis when he thought of a friend or a possession from his old life that was lost to him now, even all these months later. Then there were the nightmares. They had tapered off over the summer, although recently they had started to increase again. Jared was pretty sure he knew why, but there wasn't anything he could do about the holidays coming up on the calendar.

At least Jensen's nightmares had pretty much ended. Jared hadn't been able to persuade him to see a therapist since Jensen argued that the degree of confidentiality that would be required for him to explain in detail why his head was screwed up made it pretty much impossible. Instead, he seemed to have improved through sheer force of will, his bad dreams now few and far between.

Jared shook his head and unfolded himself from the Accord. He was home on time for once, and he was looking forward to whatever culinary masterpiece Jensen had cooked up. It turned out that Jensen had a significant amount of information buried in his head about how to produce some really awesome food, and since Jared was always up for eating, that part of their life together worked out great.

"Hey, honey, I’m home!" he called out cheerfully as he hung his white coat on the hook in the laundry room. It never failed to amuse him to say it, and if it drew a raised eyebrow or a wry grin from Jensen, well, that was all right, too.

There was a muffled sound from inside the house, and Jared stepped through the utility room into their small, cozy kitchen. It didn't look like Jensen had started cooking yet, given the clean countertops. "Jen?" he called out.

There was a thump, and then Jensen's voice called out from down the hall, strained and desperate. "Jared, the Plaça!"

Jared's blood froze, and for a moment, the rest of him did as well. One night when neither of them could sleep, they'd started joking about code words they could use to alert the other if something was wrong. At least, _Jared_ had been joking; Jensen had thought it was a fine idea and said it would make him feel better, even if he hoped to God they never needed them. They'd settled on the name of the place they'd been in Barcelona when Ravenswood targeted them with snipers and succeeded in kidnapping Jared. It was the sign to drop everything and run, as Jensen had done at that moment to successfully get away.

For Jared to hear that code spoken in the sanctuary of their own home, the one to _get the fuck out right now!_ , was like the walls of the bungalow crashing down around him.

Jared whirled around, already reaching for the phone in his jeans to call the police. The phone had barely cleared his pocket when something smacked it out of his hand, and he looked up to see a man in the doorway he'd just gone through. The man was short but stocky, although Jared quickly realized with a sharp shiver of fear that it didn't matter what he looked like when there was a small-caliber pistol in his hand pointed right at Jared. They both froze, Jared with his hands halfway up, the other man with a steady two-handed grip on his gun. 

Then there was a cry from down the hall, Jensen's wordless shout of pain, and Jared didn't care that there was a gun on him. He tore down the hall to their bedroom, six strides that had never seemed so long, and burst through the doorway.

What he saw was something out of his worst nightmare.

Jensen was on the bed, limbs stretched wide by the ropes binding his hands and feet to the four posts of the bed. The sheets around him were red and white, and for a moment Jared was puzzled as to when they'd gotten new sheets, until he realized they were stained with Jensen's blood. Huge expanses of it, some crimson-bright and some dried and dull, and Jared's gorge rose as he realized that no one could survive for long with that much of their lifeblood drained away.

"No…Jay…" Jensen's voice was a harsh rasp, a shadow of the shout he'd made earlier, and Jared understood it must have cost him a great deal of precious strength to call out the warning that had turned out to be futile. Jared heard the gunman enter the room behind him, and Jensen's eyes dimmed in understanding, a grimace crossing his pain-wracked face.

There was a movement off to one side, and Jared looked up sharply. "Oh, God," he whispered, taking an involuntary step back. A hand closed around his arm and the barrel of a gun pressed against his back, but he hardly noticed.

Moving forward from the shadows against the wall, a long, bloodstained knife in his hand, was the Panther. Raimundo Odilon, the man they were in hiding from, both of them now at his mercy and helpless.

"So nice to see you again, Jared," he said, that same cruel gleam in his eye that Jared remembered from being his captive. "We've been having a little fun while we waited for you." He held up the knife so that it gleamed in the overhead light, the blood along its length barely dulling the shine. It looked like the same knife he had stabbed Jared with all those months ago, and pain shot through Jared's back like a memory come to life. "Or at least I have been having fun," Odilon went on with a dark smirk. "I don't think Dean has enjoyed himself so much." His eyes narrowed. "Or rather, Jensen, I should say."

Jared's heart sank. How had he found out Jensen's real name? Dean Winchester was recorded as having died at Bethesda Naval Hospital, never Jensen Ackles, and only a handful of people knew the truth about the alias Jensen had taken on to entrap the man in this room. Jared's eyes shot to Jensen, but his eyes were closed, only slow, shallow breaths indicating he was still alive. He had to get to a hospital now, if it wasn't already too late, and Jared was not going to think like that, he couldn't.

"What do you want?" Jared asked, his voice shaking.

"To kill you," Odilon returned easily. He moved forward, the knife still upraised. Jared tried to back away, but the gunman behind him was holding him firmly in place. When the tip of the knife pricked the underside of Jared's chin, he flinched, remembering Odilon's threat during their last confrontation to slit Jared's throat and pull his tongue through the opening. 

Odilon must have understood where his mind went, for his smirk deepened. "We've been waiting for you, Jared. Dean is only still alive because he's going to watch you die."

"No," Jensen groaned, his voice weak and threaded with fear, and Jared knew that he'd already heard this threat, probably multiple times. He thrashed in his bonds, and Jared could see from the harsh red lines around his wrists that he'd tried before with no more success than he was having now. It looked like he barely had the strength to move, much less escape, and Jared's heart pounded faster as he realized that _he_ was their only hope at getting out of this.

"Yes," Odilon returned. He nodded at the gunman, who backed off and circled around, keeping his aim on Jared. Jared only saw him out of the corner of his eye, because everything else was fixed on the Panther, who was lightly trailing the point of his knife back and forth under Jared's chin.

Then he suddenly made a swift slicing motion, and Jared flinched back even as Jensen croaked out, "Jay!" He felt the sting of the blade along the side of his neck, but when he lifted his hand, there was only a thin line of blood along his fingers.

He looked up to see a knowing expression on Odilon's face and a light trickle of his own blood working its way down the blade over where Jensen's had already dried. Between the terror of seeing Jensen helpless and dying and the growing, cold realization that no one was going to break down the door to save them, Jared felt like he was going to be sick.

Then Odilon's leg moved in a swift, sideways kick, and Jared's knees buckled. He hit the ground with a thud, and before he could use his hands to steady himself, the Panther had grabbed his hair and pulled his head back. Jared grunted at the pain, flailing his arms to catch his balance and hopefully to grab the knife before it could be brought across his throat.

But apparently that wasn't what Odilon had in mind.

"As I told you, Dean," he hissed. "I don't let my unfinished business remain so."

Jensen tried to lift his head off the blood-soaked pillow, and Jared could see the instant his eyes widened. "Please," Jensen breathed out, more fear in his voice than Jared had ever heard from him. "Don't!"

The grip on Jared's hair tightened, and he knew with a sick, certain dread what was coming next. He looked at Jensen, letting apology and sorrow and love pour out of his gaze as he braced himself for the fate he apparently couldn't escape.

And then the Panther struck.

It was the same fiery burn of pain that Jared felt in his dreams, the knife plunging into his back the same way it had in an empty, unfinished office building in Washington, DC, Jensen looking on with the same horrified, disbelieving expression. The breath left his lungs as every nerve ending in his body went aflame at once.

Then, somehow, Jared felt the downward motion of the blade through skin and flesh, and he knew there was no coming back from this. His vision started to blur, his spine arching and his head falling back, darkness creeping in at the edges of his sight.

Jensen was calling his name over and over, but it was growing stronger, as if he was throwing every last breath he had into defying what was about to happen right before his eyes. "Jared!" Jensen shouted. "Jared, come on!"

Jared wanted to respond, wanted to say, _Can't you see the damn knife in my back?_ , but everything was dim and hazy, and he could hear Odilon's triumphant laugh as darkness closed over him.

Then a slap across Jared's cheek stunned him, and his eyes flew open.

He was staring up at the ceiling of their bedroom, his breaths echoing harshly in his ears. His heart was pounding like he'd just finished a five-mile sprint, and something was holding his wrists down at his sides.

Before he could struggle, he realized that Jensen was leaning over him, and it was his hands encircling Jared's wrists, trapping them against the bed. Jared blinked a few times, taking in the worry lining Jensen's face, and then it finally sank in that it was _Jensen_ , that he was here and safe, they both were, and Jared let out a huge breath. 

"Jay?" Jensen asked, eyeing him carefully.

"Yeah," Jared tried, but his voice was so hoarse it was barely audible. He took a deep breath, cleared his throat, and tried again. "Yeah."

Jensen let out a gust of breath. "You with me, man?"

"Yeah, I think so." Jared's heart rate was going down, and his chest wasn't heaving anymore. He could feel the sweat evaporating off him into the cool night air, and he shivered. "You okay?" he asked, looking up at Jensen. "I didn't flail around and whack you too hard, did I?"

"No, just screamed like you were being gutted," Jensen retorted, his brow still furrowed with concern.

Jared grimaced, his stomach doing a slow roll. "I thought I was," he managed. He tugged at his wrists. "C'mon, let me up." 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jensen let go and slowly sat back on his heels, not taking his eyes off of Jared. Neither of them had had a full-fledged nightmare like this in a while, the kind with thrashing and screaming and their partner unable to wake them. Jensen himself hadn't had one for a couple of months, even if his dreams were still filled with dark shadows and haunting faces that he only half-remembered. Most of his memories might have been returned to him after being shot by the Panther, but the key word was _most_. He hadn't made any progress beyond the initial recovery since beginning their new life together in California, and at this point, he doubted he ever would.

But Jared…his nightmares had come on more slowly, like once he had gotten Jensen to open up and start telling him about the horrors he saw behind closed eyelids, it freed him to have his own. He never talked about them for more than a few sentences—it was always the Panther, always coming after the two of them, always catching them by surprise and trapping them in some terrifying scenario. Then he'd shrug it off and get out of bed, claiming that he wouldn't be able to relax and insisting Jensen go back to sleep while he surfed the web or watched TV in the living room.

Tonight felt different, though. Jensen had never had such a hard time waking him up before, and he'd truly been scared for a moment that he wouldn't be able to reach Jared. When he'd finally slapped him across the face, hard, it had done the trick, and now Jared was sitting up, arms draped over his drawn-up knees, breath slowing down but his sweat-soaked hair showing the signs of what he'd been through.

Jensen sat back. "You want to talk about it?"

Jared didn't respond at first, staring at the foot of the bed. Then he shook himself briefly and said, "The usual, you know? He was here, right here in this room, and he had you tied up waiting for me. Said he was going to kill me and make you watch."

Jensen reached out to put a hand on Jared's shoulder. When he didn't flinch at the touch, he went on, "I'm fine, Jay. We're both fine."

"I know that," Jared snapped back. Then he let out a short sigh and dropped his head. "There was so much blood. He said he'd been having _fun_ with you, and I knew that it was too much, there was so much blood on the sheets, and I couldn't—"

"Hey," Jensen said sharply, grabbing Jared's jaw and turning his face toward him. "He's not here. He's never going to be here. We're _safe_."

"You don't know that," Jared returned, and even if Jensen could barely make out his features in the dim room, the tremor in his voice was unmistakable. "You don't know that I'm not going to come home from work _today_ to find you strung up in here and him waiting with that goddamn knife."

"Listen to me." Jensen gentled his grip, sliding his hand up Jared's face to palm his cheek. "Alex has people at Ravenswood watching out for us, watching for any sign of Odilon on the same damn continent as us. Okay?" When Jared nodded, albeit with a mutinous look, Jensen went on, "We've got the most elaborate home alarm system in the whole county. You've gotten to be a good shot when we do target practice, and I know you can handle yourself in a hand-to-hand fight. I still don't think all of that's necessary, but I know it makes you feel more secure." 

Jared nodded again, less grudgingly, and Jensen bent forward to give him a kiss, short but heartfelt. When he pulled away, he braced himself and said more firmly, "But there's only so much we can do to this house. Only so much we can do to your physical skills. At some point, you need to work on what's in your head."

"And how'm I supposed to do that?" Jared asked in the same bitter tone he used every time Jensen brought up the idea of going to a psychologist. "I can't talk about any of the details of what happened because they're classified and the guy they happened to is dead."

Jensen held back the exasperated sigh he wanted to give and said instead, "You know WitSec can find someone you can talk freely to. It might be by a secure phone line or a scrambled video feed, but it can be done."

"I don't need it," Jared insisted, turning his head away from Jensen's caress. "I’m fine."

"So fine that you scream in the middle of the night and won't wake up until I _hit_ you," Jensen shot back. "That's not healthy, and it's not going to get better on its own."

Jared lowered his head and mumbled something.

"What was that?" Jensen asked dangerously.

Lifting his head, Jared said loud and clear, "It worked for you."

Jensen wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at that defiant and oh-so-wrong observation. "Dude, I'm so much more fucked up than you, it's not even funny."

"Then what's your deal?" Jared asked, throwing his hands up in the air. "You don't have nightmares anymore. You eat and sleep and go to work and make friends like nothing bad ever happened to you. And then you come home and insist that I need to go see a damn shrink because I'm having a few bad dreams."

"A _few_? I'm worried about you!" Jensen retorted. "Jared, I—I care about you a lot. You know that."

Jared dropped his head and nodded silently, his face hidden behind his hair.

Jensen sighed. "I don't know what's wrong, man. The last few weeks, whatever it is, it's worse. Not the nightmares, but…" He trailed off and closed his hands into fists around the bedclothes, down at his sides where Jared couldn't see. "If this is too much, if being around me reminds you of what happened or something, and it's taken this long to register…" Jensen had to take a deep breath before he went on. "Maybe it wasn't a good idea, moving in together like we did when we barely knew each other and had all this shit to deal with in our own heads. Maybe we should take some time apart."

Instantly, Jared's head shot up, his face stricken. "Is that what you think?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

Jensen licked his lips. "I don't want to, but I don't know what else to try," he admitted. 

"No," Jared said, firmly shaking his head. "You're what keeps me going right now. If I didn't have you to come home to…You're all I've got." His voice cracked as he went on, "Don't leave me."

"Oh, Jay." Jensen swiftly leaned forward, kissing Jared hard and sure, hands closing over his biceps and holding him in place. "I'm here, okay? Nothing's going to happen to you as long as I'm here."

Jared kissed him back almost desperately, and Jensen knew that he'd made a mistake suggesting that they were better off apart, even if only for a short time. The thought of it had terrified him, but if it was what Jared needed, he'd be willing to do it.

The way Jared was clutching at him now, though, licking his way into Jensen's mouth and pushing him until he fell on his back, covering Jensen's body with his long, muscular frame, it was pretty clear that time apart wasn't what Jared needed at all. Actually, given the hard, firm line Jensen could feel against his thigh, he knew exactly what Jared needed.

And Jensen was more than happy to spend the rest of the night giving it to him.


	2. Book 1 (Morro Bay), Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got your adrenaline going with that first chapter, didn't I? ;)

The next morning, Jared was still bleary-eyed after a cup of coffee at home and his usual extra-large caramel latte on the way in to the clinic. He hadn't gone back to sleep after their brief round of sex—or, more accurately, their fucking, given how he'd pounded into Jensen and barely remembered to get a hand around him to return the favor. 

Jensen had cleaned them up afterwards and then draped himself over Jared like a blanket, or rather like protection. He knew Jensen had to be getting tired of his nightmares disrupting their sleep. Not to mention they'd been getting worse in intensity, more vivid in their sensory details. Sometimes Jared was well aware that he was dreaming, given that he saw himself back in that office building in Washington, or saw Jensen being shot and falling into the cold waters of the Adriatic, something he'd only had described to him but had never seen. But last night, he hadn't realized it was a dream until Jensen forced him awake. The terror had lingered over him as he held Jensen close for the rest of the night. 

No matter how heavy his eyelids had felt and how relaxed his body was, Jared's mind hadn't been able to shut down. So he'd listened to the faint, distant roar of the surf, felt Jensen's chest rise and fall against his side, safe and warm in his arms, and waited until the rosy light of morning was slipping above the hills before climbing out of bed and going for a run.

Thankfully, given how tired he was, Jared's schedule was light today. WitSec had set him up as a doctor at a clinic in Morro Bay. He liked the job, liked taking care of people the way he'd always pictured himself doing, even if it wasn't quite as prestigious as what he had planned on.

"Rough night?" Sarah asked as he paused in the hallway between patients to rub at his eyes and yawn.

"Bad dream," he answered with a wan smile. Sarah was one of the nurses on staff, who'd immediately taken a liking to Jared and almost as immediately sensed that he wasn't responding to her invitations to lunch or dinner or even a coffee. Even when she made it clear that she wasn't flirting with him—because her wife discouraged that sort of thing—he still restricted himself to brief conversations in the hallways until she got the hint and stopped asking.

He was that way with everyone, a far cry from the outgoing person he'd been in med school. It was like after his parents and brother had died—the sudden introversion, the clinging to the one person who was still with him, the unwillingness to get close to anyone else in case they, too, were taken away. What made it worse this time was that _he_ was the one who'd been taken away, his entire life yanked out from under him. He was terrified that he'd slip up and say something about Jared Padalecki rather than Jacob Hanson, and then all of the work that went into setting them up here would be for nothing and that they'd have to start over. Worse yet, he'd have to start over without Jensen, and that he really didn't know if he could do.

Fortunately, most of the patients Jared saw weren't the neighborly, chatty type. For all that this was a California beachfront town, it was still a fishing village, full of people who were friendly enough to visitors but close-mouthed with newcomers. That was fine with Jared; as long as no one was rude to him and didn't think it was impolite of him not to take up their conversational gambits, he was content.

And really, that was it. He was _content_. He and Jensen made as great a team on the domestic front as they had on the run. An entire house together seemed downright spacious compared to the hotel rooms they'd shared, and despite the nightmares, Jared did feel safe here. But he wasn't happy.

Not that Jensen appeared to be any different. Jared wondered sometimes when the last time was that Jensen had truly been _happy_. He assumed it was some time back when Sam Winchester was alive. Given how deeply Jensen had cared for the man, there had to have been some real happiness there. Jared still saw shadows in Jensen's eyes a lot of the time, either memories or things he couldn't remember. But he also knew that Jensen didn't regret taking that leap during their recuperation at the cottage in Wisconsin and asking Jared to stay with him when they were relocated. 

And neither did Jared. Because he sure as hell needed Jensen. He relied on Jensen every day to keep him sane. Jensen was so patient with him through his moodiness and his nightmares, which he insisted was only returning the favor for everything Jared had done for him in their trek across Europe. Still, Jared wondered if once this all was over, once it was safe for him to go back home (and he had to believe that day would come), if he and Jensen would still be together. He would like to think so—it almost physically hurt to think otherwise—but sometimes Jensen's words from their hotel room in Amsterdam after their first kiss, about it all being the heat of the moment, came back to haunt him. 

Sarah was giving him a sympathetic smile. "Here I figured a rough night meant something else, given that gorgeous boyfriend of yours."

Jared ducked his head, his hair falling over his eyes. "Sadly, no," he said, even though it was only partially true. One of the few times Jensen had picked Jared up at work, when his own car had been in the shop, Sarah had still been at the office when Jensen came in. Later she'd teased Jared that now she understood why he never took anyone up on an invitation to hang out outside of work, when he had _that_ waiting at home for him. He'd blushed and muttered something in reply, and she'd called him adorable and left him alone.

Now, she patted his arm. "Well, it should be an easy day today. Only a few appointments, mostly checkups. Mr. Robinson's in again about the pain in his side; maybe you can convince him that it's the saturated fats making his gallbladder feel like it's going to explode?"  
"I think he likes his French fries too much to give them up," Jared said. 

She smiled. "Try flashing those cute dimples of yours and see if that makes a difference."

Jared doubted he could get up the energy to flash anything at the moment, but something must have gotten through, because for the first time that he knew of, Mr. Robinson agreed to at least try cutting down on the amount of fat he ate to see if it made a difference to his pain. Sarah must have been listening at the door, because she came into the examining room where Jared was typing up his notes after Mr. Robinson left and gave him a fist-bump. "You are awesome, Jay," she said.

Jared had insisted that he be referred to by his nickname, wary that he simply wouldn't respond if someone called him Jake or Jacob. "Doctor Hanson" was difficult enough, but he hadn't slipped up yet. Now he replied with, "Why yes, I am," getting Sarah to give a surprised laugh.

He leaned back in the cheap office chair and looked up at her. Late last night, or maybe this morning, after Jensen had let him fuck out his fear and his need for release—something Jared seriously owed him for—he'd brought up what Jared had said, that Jensen was all he had. As much as it was true, Jared knew that it was part of the problem. Jensen had made friends with his co-workers at the college, even having some of them over for dinner or going out with them for drinks. Jared was resentful of the fact that Jensen seemed to find it so easy, until he realized that it might just be Jensen playing another role, like he'd done for the past three years.

Well, there was nothing to say that Jared couldn't play that role, too. Maybe opening up a little, at least on the outside, would help ease his mind. So he cleared his throat and asked, "So since there's only one more patient on my schedule, and I saw that you're already free, do you want to grab a cup of coffee down at Two Dogs?" 

Sarah blinked at him. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Finally she spread her hands apart and said, "I'm not going to ask. Yes, that would be lovely. Come get me in the kitchen when you're done?"

The clinic was in a converted house, and even though the kitchen only held a fridge and sink, the cabinets having been claimed for medical supplies, it was still what they called it. "Yeah, I'll do that," Jared said, surprised to find that he was looking forward to it. 

His final patient was a young boy who'd broken a finger playing softball and was so impatient to get back to the game that he'd set back his healing process. Jared sternly advised him to take it one day at a time and not push it too hard. The boy grudgingly agreed, but not before insisting that he _had to_ keep it active or else the muscles would atrophy and then he wouldn't be able to use it all, because that was what had happened with his dad's shoulder. 

Jared bit back the explanation that fingers weren't the same as shoulders and that ten-year-olds weren't the same as forty-year-olds, instead coming up with a couple of "exercises" that the kid could do at home that wouldn't do him any harm. His mother gave him a knowing smile and thanked him, and Jared sent them on their way with his own internal, rueful grin.

Maybe he needed to take some of his own medicine.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A couple of days after Jared's nightmare, Jensen was at home on a Wednesday, his classes done and no grading for once. He was moving around the kitchen, humming a French tune that he'd played a recording of for his class to illustrate a point about grammar. It was funny how after all that he'd been through, he was doing what he expected he would when he studied linguistics in college: teaching students who were only in his classes to fulfill their graduation requirements. Still, there were one or two in every class who were really into it, and they made up for the rest. Usually.

The knock at the front door came at the worst possible time: the pasta was almost done but needed careful watching for that last, critical moment to keep it the right consistency, and the tomato sauce needed to boil off a little more liquid, but not too much or it would start sticking to the sides of the pan. Jensen groaned and called out, "Just a minute!"

He turned down the heat on the tomato sauce and trusted that he would get back in time before the pasta went mushy. Wiping his hands on the dishtowel, he ducked out of the kitchen and down the short hallway past the living room and to the front door. It was probably one of their neighbors asking to borrow the lawn mower or return the garden shears or something; he hadn't made plans with anyone from work, and Jared didn't seem to have anyone he talked to outside of Jensen, even at work. Yet another item on the long list of things he really wished Jared would open up about.

When Jensen opened the door, it was almost the last person he would have expected to see.

"Hello, Jon," said Alex Conklin.

Jensen stared at him, his brain struggling to make sense of this piece of his past showing up with no warning, no preparation. After everything he'd done for Jensen when he worked for Ravenswood, after everything he'd tried to do to Jensen when everyone thought he had gone rogue, Alex had set them up in this new life and pledged never to disturb him unless it was with word that the Panther had been captured and it was safe for Jared to come home.

"Alex," Jensen managed, his heart in his throat. "Have you—is he—?"

His old friend shook his head, regret in his eyes. "I'm afraid not," he said. "We knew his whereabouts three months ago, but the trail went cold again."

Jensen grimaced, his hand tightening on the edge of the door. "Then what are you doing here?" he asked, aware that his voice wasn't friendly, but knowing that whatever Alex's reason for being here was, if it wasn't to inform them that they were finally safe, it wasn't a good thing.

"May I come in?" Alex asked mildly.

Biting back the childish impulse to shut the door in his face and make whatever reason he had for being here go away, Jensen gave a polite if empty smile and stepped back, gesturing inside. "Of course."

With an equally polite yet stiff nod, Alex carefully scraped his shoes on the welcome mat and walked in. Jensen watched him take in the place, from the dark wood of the Craftsman-style building to the ocean-themed prints they'd hung on the walls over the simple, comfortable-looking furniture. It felt like a summer cottage, like a vacation home, and that wasn't a coincidence. A summer cottage was somewhere you visited, somewhere temporary until you went back to your real life. Six months in, and he knew Jared hadn't shaken the idea that this was only a passing thing. Hell, he wasn't even sure he'd shaken it himself. 

And here Alex was, showing up out the blue for something that was in no way a social visit.

"Jay will be home in a bit," Jensen said. "He's out for a run with Meg."

Alex's eyes widened, and Jensen hurried on, "The dog. Our dog is named Megan." Jared might not be able to be in contact with his little sister anymore, but Jensen knew it helped him to have the golden retriever to pay attention to and spoil. She also served to keep up with him on his long runs along the beach. As Jensen had healed from his nearly-deadly bullet wound, he'd gradually worked his way back up to the full strength and power he'd had as Dean Winchester, but even then, he couldn't keep up with Jared's long legs when he was in full outrun-my-life mode, which seemed to be his preferred speed these days.

"You want something to drink?" Jensen asked as he led the way to the kitchen, figuring he might as well play the host. Alex had the inscrutable look on his face that meant he wasn't going to reveal his reasons for visiting until all members of the team were present, and in this case, that apparently meant Jared.

"Beer would be great if you've got it," Alex said, leaning against the doorjamb and watching Jensen move around the small kitchen, testing the almost-overdone pasta and stirring the pasta sauce. "I see you've been able to recall your cooking skills."

Jensen shrugged and unhooked the colander from the rack of pots next to the kitchen window. Outside, he looked at the tiny sliver of ocean visible between the houses across the street. The waves looked rough today; Jared was probably going to be all windblown when he came back in. "I don't remember having much time to do it before." He opened the fridge and removed a Corona, cracking it open with the heavy silver ring on his right hand before handing it to Alex.

"Not once you and Sam started going in the field," Alex said, somewhat absently. Then he shook his head slightly and accepted the bottle. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to bring back any unpleasant memories."

"It's all right," Jensen shrugged, placing the colander in the white-enameled sink and grabbing the potholders from their hook on the refrigerator. "I'm not going to break if you mention his name."

There was silence for a moment. Alex took a long pull from the bottle and then said, "How are you doing?"

It was a sincere question, and as much as Jensen's nerves were itching, wondering what the hell Alex was bringing to their doorstep, he felt he had to answer it. "Mostly good," he said honestly, emptying the pasta into the colander and leaning back out of the way of the steam. "Probably going to be able to predict the weather some day based on how various body parts ache, but I feel fine."

"That's good," Alex replied with a slightly rueful smile. 

Jensen dished out the pasta and reached for the sauce, stirring it again before putting the lid on and turning the heat down to a low simmer. Jared was due back shortly, and even his super-quick post-run shower would take a few minutes after that. 

When he was done fiddling with the food, he turned and looked at Alex. "Whatever it is, I'm not doing it. Just so you know."

Alex tilted his head to the side. "What do you mean?"

Jensen rolled his eyes. "Whatever it is that you're here to ask me to do. I meant it when I told you I was out, the first time I saw you again in the hospital and the last time I saw you before we came here. I mean it now, too."

The enigmatic look he got in response was the same one that had driven him nuts on more than one occasion, when Jensen knew that he wasn't being told everything but that it was all he was going to get. Sam had brushed it off, claiming he was used to it because of his dad, but Jensen had always resented it. 

Before Alex could say anything, though, the back door on the far side of the utility room swung open and a tall figure appeared.

"We've got company," Jensen warned, and that was all he managed to get out before sixty pounds of golden retriever barreled through the open door and at the stranger standing in the kitchen doorway.

Meg proceeded to demonstrate her worthlessness as a guard dog by dropping to her haunches at Alex's feet and lifting her head to be scratched, tongue lolling out.

"Who is it?" Jared asked, lifting the bottom of his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face as he entered the kitchen. Normally, Jensen's mouth would have started watering at the ridges of Jared's abdominals that particular move revealed, but the nerves tangling in his stomach prevented it. 

Then Jared looked up and saw Alex.

Jensen could read the emotions across his face as plain as day: the same shock Jensen had felt on seeing someone from _before_ , followed by the gears in his brain racing as he tried to figure out why. "What's wrong?" Jared asked harshly, striding forward. "Did something happen to Meg?"

The dog barked at her name, and Alex reached down to scratch between her ears. "Your sister's fine," he assured Jared, and Jensen wanted to kick himself for not asking about that possibility.

"How do you know?" Jared asked, hands going to his hips, his grey, sweat-stained muscle shirt straining.

"We have people in Texas who look in on her every once in a while," Alex replied. "She's safe."

Jensen noted the wording, not _she's fine_ , but then, a young woman who was functionally orphaned and alone even though her brother was alive and well hundreds of miles away wasn't likely to be _fine_.

"Then why are you here?" Jared demanded.

Jensen laid a hand on his arm, feeling it slick with sweat. "He'll tell us over dinner," he said. "Why don't you go clean up?"

"You don't know?" Jared asked, his eyes shifting to Jensen. His hair was stuck to the nape of his neck with sweat, and Jensen felt overheated just looking at him.

"He's always been a secretive bastard," Jensen returned, shooting a sideways glance at Alex to reassure him that he was just teasing. Partially.

Jared glowered for a moment and then slipped past Alex and toward the rear of the house, whistling to the dog to follow.

Jensen reached for the baguette on the counter that he'd bought on the way home from work. "Plates are in the cupboard next to the fridge," he said, gesturing with the bread knife. "Silverware's in the drawer below that. Dining room's on the other side of the pass-through."

With a short nod, Alex obeyed the implicit command and set the table for three, pouring glasses of water from the refrigerated pitcher that Jensen pointed out. Jensen sliced the bread at a precise angle, arranging the pieces neatly on a plate and drizzling olive oil at the center, taking a moment to center himself since he was apparently going to have to be the calm one when Alex told them what was going on.

 _Just like old times_ , he thought somewhat bitterly.

When Alex took the plate from him, the older man said in a lower voice, "I take it he isn't doing quite as well as you have been."

Jensen's eyes snapped up to his. "Jay's doing fine," he said sharply.

Alex spread his hands apart. "If you say so," he replied. He drew in a breath as if to say something more, then shook his head. "Is there a second bathroom where I can wash up?"

Jensen sighed at the reminder that he hadn't even bothered to show his old friend around his home. "Next door on the left past the kitchen."

When Alex left, Jensen rubbed a hand over his jaw. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. Maybe he could get Alex to convince Jared that he needed to talk to someone before he sank farther into the depression that had been hanging over him like the low clouds along the coast.

And maybe Alex was just here to say hi and enjoy a good pasta dinner.


	3. Book 1 (Morro Bay), Chapter 3

Jared toweled himself dry with the same sharp, jerking motions with which he'd scrubbed off the sweaty remnants of his run. Coming home and seeing Alex Conklin standing right there in the fucking kitchen, right after Jensen told him more insistently than ever that he needed to get some mental help, was not a goddamn coincidence. Next time Jared had a nightmare, he was keeping it to himself, thank you very much.

He was nearly done drying himself when he realized how ludicrous that was. There was only one way for Jensen to get in touch with Alex, and that was to be used only in case of an emergency. There was no way that Alex was here at Jensen's request, no matter how worried Jensen was about him. That reassured Jared for only a second, because then he started wondering why Alex _was_ here.

Throwing on basketball shorts and a Cal Poly t-shirt, Jared padded out into the main rooms of the house, damp feet sticking slightly on the hardwood floors. He breathed in deeply as he left the bedroom, drawing in the faint, mingled scents of himself and Jensen that always seemed to linger in the air here, calming and reassuring him.

When he entered the dining room and found Jensen showing Alex a small photo album that normally lived on one of the built-in bookcases, he came up behind him and slipped an arm around his waist. "I'm less cranky now," he said with a dimpled grin. "Washed it all off in the shower."

"Good," Jensen replied, twisting his head back to give him a kiss. Jared kept it short, still a little shy about PDA even after six months in a laidback California beach town. Old habits died hard, after all.

"How are you, Jay?" Alex asked, blue eyes more warm and welcoming than Jared probably deserved, given his abrupt greeting earlier.

"Fine," he said, holding out his free hand and giving Alex's a hearty shake. "How about you?"

"Doing well," Alex responded with a smile. "There's always more to do, of course, but we're getting the job done."

"That's good," Jared agreed blandly. He still wasn't sure what all "the job" entailed; even though Jensen remembered most things from his pre-amnesia days, he still refused to talk about his work at Ravenswood, citing confidentiality agreements as well as a strong desire simply not to talk about it. Jared respected his wishes, although sometimes it drove him nuts that he would apparently never gain access to such an important part of Jensen's past.

Sometimes he wondered if it came from a desire to avoid talking about Sam Winchester as much as any confidentiality agreement, but he kept that to himself.

"Why don't we eat?" Jensen asked, putting down the album. It had pictures of their one and only trip since coming here, a leisurely drive up the coast to Monterey. Most of the best parts of that trip weren't preserved in photographs, at least not ones that Jared wanted anyone else but him and Jensen to see, but he thought it was kind of cute that Jensen was showing off the pictures of them goofing off on the beach.

They made small talk during dinner, everyone carefully tiptoeing around the elephant in the room without even knowing what size and shape and color it was. The food was amazing as always, and it wasn't long before the bright blue serving bowls were empty, the solid stoneware plates scraped clean, and Jared was leaning back in his chair with a hand over his satisfied stomach.

"God, you're a bottomless pit," Jensen teased. "I expected there to be leftovers."

"You weren't expecting a guest," Jared shot back, and then he tensed up at the reminder that they still didn't know why their guest was here.

Alex let out a sigh before dabbing his lips with his napkin, as if realizing that the time had come. "Is there somewhere more comfortable to sit? This could take a while."

They took seats in the living room, Alex in the light blue recliner in the corner, Jared and Jensen on the overstuffed beige sofa with a few inches of space between them. Meg climbed up next to Jared and turned around twice before lying down, head on his thigh in the perfect position to be petted. Jared's hand automatically came down to scratch between her ears, and he wondered if somehow she knew that whatever they were about to hear was going to be difficult for him.

Alex cleared his throat. "I suppose I might as well start."

"Please do," Jensen said, tension barely discernible in his voice.

"Je—Jon, do you remember when you were incapacitated with a broken leg?" Alex began.

Jared frowned. It was weird to hear Alex using Jensen's WitSec name when it was just the three of them, but he supposed that was deliberate to keep from using Jensen's real name by accident when someone else was around. 

There was something else bothering Jared, though. "When did you break your leg?" He'd never noticed Jensen favoring one leg over the other at all, although that didn't always follow from a healed break.

"What about it?" Jensen asked, apparently ignoring Jared's question. His right hand was up by his temple, absently tracing the grooved scar from the Panther's bullet that had come so close to killing him but took away his memory instead.

"You saw a recording taken not long afterwards," Alex said with a nod to Jared. "In Barcelona, when I was trying to convince you that I knew Jon. The second recording you picked out to watch had him on crutches."

Jared remembered being taken aback at how familiar Sam Winchester looked, but also how protective and fierce his near-twin had been as he hovered around Jensen. "What happened?" he asked, not sure which of the two men in the room he was directing the question to.

"Paris," was Jensen's taciturn response. He often got like this when Jared asked him about something in the past, and Jared hadn't learned yet to sort out when he was refusing to share information because he couldn't, because it was too painful, or because it was one of the extant holes in his memory.

"The London subway bombings in 2005 were carried out by a group whose plans included a second attack in Paris a few months later," Alex explained, his eyes locked on Jensen but his words clearly directed at Jared.

Jared frowned. "There was never a Paris subway attack."

Jensen's raised eyebrows and pointed look were all the response Jared needed. "Oh. Wow." He sat back against the couch. "You guys stopped that? Wow."

"Not without injury," Alex pointed out. His voice softened as he went on, "And not without feeling they should have prevented London, too, I daresay." 

"Is there a point to this?" Jensen asked, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his thighs.

Alex held his hands up. "You were on bed rest for weeks, and with your leg the way it was, you couldn't go back into the field for months after that. Sam needed something to do in the meantime, and he agreed to take on another assignment."

Twin crescents formed at the inside edges of Jensen's eyebrows as he frowned. "Bali, right? In the middle of November? He made it sound like it was nothing but a damn vacation, but I knew better."

Alex looked at him for a moment and then shook his head. "I should have known that even between the two of you, you kept your confidentiality agreements intact."

"The list of things Sam never told me would fill that bookshelf," Jensen said, pointing to the built-in behind where Alex was sitting. The words might have been bitter, but Jared thought the tone was more resigned, like it was something Jensen had come to terms with a long time ago. "What was he doing in Bali?"

"Banda Aceh, actually. He was the last point of contact for an informant before he entered a network of suspected Indonesian terrorists," Alex explained. "Deep cover, long term, a very difficult assignment. Sam was the one to talk to him before his final insertion, and since he'd done that before with you a few times, I had no problem with him doing it on his own."

"Hm," Jensen said, but that was all.

Alex leaned forward, steepling his fingers together. "We received a message two weeks ago from that informant, using an old code which might have been disregarded except for our recent experience with contacts not following proper protocols." He raised his eyebrows, and Jared almost smiled as he remembered convincing this man that the reason Jensen wasn't using the expected signals to contact him was that his memory was gone, not that he'd changed sides. "He's ready to come out and tell us what he knows. The thing is, he's been deep undercover for four years. And the only person he's willing to talk to is Sam Winchester."

"But he's dead," Jared blurted out, immediately wanting to smack the back of his own head for bringing up the obvious.

"No," Jensen said sharply, suddenly, and Jared flinched at the harshness of his tone. "No way, Alex." He looked furious, eyes blazing and hands clenched into fists where they hung between his knees.

"Let me explain," Alex said, a warning tone entering his voice.

"No," Jensen said shortly. "There's nothing to explain. He's not doing it."

"Don't you want to let him make up his own mind about that?" Alex returned.

"I don't care what it is," Jensen said, rising to his feet. "You've already taken enough away from him. You're leaving now, and you're going to leave us alone."

Alex's eyes narrowed. "You're being awfully presumptive."

" _I'm_ being presumptive?" Jensen asked with a finger to his chest. He pointed at Alex. "You're the one who waltzed in here without any preparation or warning and scared the life out of us both, and now you think you're going to talk Jay into pretending to be a dead man?"

"What?" Jared asked, belatedly catching on to what they were talking about.

Alex leaned back in his chair, his blue eyes going cold. "Jon, sit down."

"Don't you come into my house and tell me--"

Jared reached up and laid a hand on his arm. "Calm down, Jen."

"I _am_ calm," Jensen snapped, jerking away from Jared's touch. But he reluctantly sat down, a few more inches separating him from Jared than before. "Go ahead, Alex. But the answer's no."

Alex pressed his lips together. "This is why I wanted to have dinner first," he tried, but when neither Jensen nor Jared cracked a smile, he sighed. "This informant is coming out with four years' worth of information on this organization. _Four years._ God only knows what that includes, what kind of future attacks that could prevent. And the only person he'll talk to is the one who was his last point of contact."

"The dead man who looked like me," Jared filled in, unease twisting in his gut.

"That's right," Alex said, and Jared was grateful that he didn't try to sugarcoat it. "I came here to ask if you would be willing to play the part of Sam Winchester long enough to get this man to tell you what he's learned."

"No," Jensen said firmly, arms folded across his chest.

Jared rolled his eyes. Turning to Alex, he said, "Sam's been gone for years. Why doesn't this guy know that?"

"Maybe they don't get the Ravenswood newsletter in Indonesia," Jensen grumbled.

"That's a good question," Alex said. "And it does suggest that this might be a trap of some sort. So every possible precaution would be taken to ensure your safety." Jensen snorted loudly, and Alex raised his voice. "You would meet with him in Ravenswood's office in Sydney—just you, or Sam, as he's requesting, but in a secure location and with plenty of assistance at hand. All you would need to do is listen to what he tells you while we record it."

Jared took a deep breath. "Tell me more," he said, ignoring the sharp intake of breath from Jensen. "Tell me everything I need to know to decide if this is something I want to do."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jensen was furious. Oh, he reined it in while Alex was talking, laying out all of the details of how well-protected Jared would be, how they'd give him access to recordings of Sam so that he could learn to imitate his way of speaking and moving long enough to fool a man who'd talked to him on two or three occasions four long years ago. Jensen had stayed quiet while Jared asked questions about what this informant might expect of him, and Alex answered honestly that since no one but Sam knew for sure what they'd said to each other, all they had to go on was Sam's debriefing files.

All in all, Jensen was pretty proud of himself for not exploding the way he wanted to when Jared said he'd think about it. He'd escorted Alex to the door with a curt, "Nice to see you again," and then closed the door behind him and resisted the urge to thump his head against the wood.

Jared had slipped into the dining room to start stacking up the dishes, carrying them to the dishwasher with furtive movements that indicated he was going to try and slip away as soon as he was done. But the second he turned the dishwasher on, Jensen was standing in front of him, arms folded over his chest. "We need to talk."

"I suppose we do," Jared returned, drawing himself up to his full height. 

"You can't do this," Jensen started. "I don't care what kind of precautions Alex thinks he's put in place. This whole thing is way too suspicious, only agreeing to talk to one person."

"But why now?" Jared asked, throwing his hands out from his sides. "If this guy wants to do something to Sam Winchester, why so many years later?"

"Maybe it's not him," Jensen said darkly, voicing something he hadn't wanted to bring up in front of Alex for fear of being accused of paranoia. "Maybe someone else is behind this. Someone who wants to get to you and to me."

Jared's face paled. "You think this is Odilon's doing?"

Jensen shrugged and leaned against the doorjamb. "We only have Alex's word for how this guy got in contact with him. Think about that for a moment, Jay. Four years of no contact and he still remembers the channels to use to send the information he needs to, but he'll only talk to one person."

"Four years of living undercover among terrorists," Jared reminded him. "I'd probably want to talk to the guy who put me in there, too."

"And you think that's a good thing?" Jensen demanded. "Even if he is on the up and up, what if he wants to hurt the guy who sent him on this mission?"

"That's why there'll be people watching," Jared said, his voice growing exasperated. "Even you, if you want. Or were you too busy tuning Alex out at that point?"

"Jared, you have no idea how any of this works," Jensen warned, taking a step forward, realizing that it was a sign of how angry he was getting that he was using Jared's full name, which he tried to avoid even at home. "You've never done anything like this before, never trained for anything like this. And you have no idea how fast it can all go south, without any warning at all."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Jared moved toward him, fire now in his eyes. "Do you not remember how we met? I think I have more than enough of an idea about how fast things can go to hell."

Jensen briefly closed his eyes. "Sorry. I know that, I just—" He let out a gusty sigh. "I can't let you do this."

"You can't stop me." Jared's eyes were flashing with anger.

"Why do you want to do this so bad?"

Jared leaned back against the counter. The steady trickle of water into the dishwasher was turning into the low rumble of agitating water, and he raised his voice to compensate. "Because it's something I _can_ do. That only I can do. I'm tired of being stuck here in hiding, and this is something I can do to make things better out there in the world."  
"Jay, you help people every day," Jensen insisted.

"Not like this. Come on, you heard what Alex said. If this guy has been undercover with this group for four years…that's a lot of really useful information that they might never get a hold of otherwise."

"Do you really think you can do it? Pretend to be someone else like that? Someone you've never met but this other guy has? And keep it up until Ravenswood is satisfied they've gotten everything they need from him?"

Jared shrugged and tilted his head forward, his bangs shading his eyes. "S'all I do anyway," he muttered. When Jensen gave him a quizzical look, he went on, "Pretend to be someone else."

"Jay."

"It's true," Jared insisted. "I don't know who I am anymore. Jared Padalecki's dead, and I don't know who Jacob Hanson is, even when that's what my ID badge and my paperwork and all of my mail say. So I pretend to be this guy all day, and when I come home, I can kind of be me for a while. But you don't know who that is anyway, since you don't know me from before, and so nothing and no one in my life is like it used to be. So acting like someone else? Yeah, I think I can pull that off."


	4. Book 1 (Morro Bay), Chapter 4

Jensen wanted to move forward and take Jared into his arms, but Jared's defensive stance told him that might not be such a good idea right now. "You think watching some old recordings will tell you how to be someone else, good enough to fool this guy?"

Jared shuffled his feet on the linoleum. "I was kind of hoping you could help me out, too."

The pit in Jensen's stomach grew deeper. He knew himself well enough to realize that this was one of the biggest parts of his objection to what Alex wanted Jared to do, but he also knew that it was something he should be able to get over. "I'm not so sure about that," he said haltingly.

Jared's head snapped up as if he was going to tell Jensen off, but then his expression changed. Jensen thought he was hiding his emotions, but Jared had always been able to read him well, even back when neither of them knew his name. "What's going on?" he asked quietly. He took a step forward and reached out to put a hand on Jensen's shoulder, the touch warm through his button-down. "What are you really upset about?"

"I'm worried about you," Jensen blurted out, staring at his chest. "You're not handling things so well right now, and to try and get inside someone's head enough to pretend to be him, especially someone as fucked up as Sam was…I don't think it's a good idea." At Jared's quizzical tilt of the head, he went on, "Look, you know I cared about him." _Understatement_ , Jensen thought, considering all he'd gone through to get revenge on Sam's killer, but he went on, "That doesn't mean he didn't have issues. I meant what I said to Alex: there was plenty Sam never told me about who he was before I knew him, and maybe even some things he did while I knew him. I understood that, and it was okay. But it marked him, as sure as the scars that he never told me about or the instincts he never explained."

Jared was quiet, and Jensen moved closer, curling his fingers around a strong bicep. "I know you've been through hell, and you're still going through it, but to me, you're still innocent. You don't know all of the horrible things that people can do to each other. You haven't seen it with your own eyes, you haven't done it with your own hands. And I don’t want you to." He lifted his head and looked Jared square in the eye. "I don't want you to _become_ Sam Winchester, in any sense of the word."

"C'mon. I'm not going to leave the Ravenswood office," Jared pressed. "I'm not going to physically bring this guy in from whatever godforsaken island he's been hiding on. I'm going to listen to him talk in a nice, secure, safe office, and you're going to be right there on the other side of the wall." 

Jensen didn't respond, caught up in the thought of all of the ways this could go wrong, all the ways that Jared could be pulled into something he couldn't handle, like the last time he'd let Jared come along with him in Barcelona. When Jared's hand tightened on his shoulder, he looked up. Jared went on, "I know you don't think I can handle this, but from what Alex said, it's not a big deal."

"It's not that I don't think you can handle it," Jensen said. "Not if it all goes right. I mean, you're right, you've got some experience pretending to be someone you're not, and it's not like this guy could have known Sam that well anyway." He rubbed his hand up and down Jared's arm. "But I don't want things to get any worse for you than they already are."

Jared let out a snort and pulled Jensen closer until their foreheads were touching. "That's going to happen regardless."

"What do you mean?" Jensen asked warily.

"I mean, the reason I've been so off lately." Jared let out a breath, and it washed warm over Jensen's face. "I haven't said anything because there's nothing you can do about it, and I know that you're worried, but it's going to take some time. And a trip like this would serve as a great distraction." 

"Did something happen?" Jensen asked, suddenly worried.

Jared sighed again. "It's Thanksgiving in a couple of weeks. It was always a big family thing, and it was always hard for Megan and me without our parents and big brother, but we still tried to make it special, you know? And then it'll be Christmas, and I can't help but think of her being all alone at home, and it's so fucking hard to know that she's there and I can't go to her. So fucking unfair."

Wordlessly, Jensen shifted closer and embraced Jared, pulling his head down to his shoulder and holding him close. Jared's arms slid around Jensen's back and he sighed again, this time slumping against Jensen like he was letting Jensen hold him up.

They stayed like that for a while, swaying back and forth slightly. "I'm sorry, Jay," Jensen finally said. "I didn't even think about that coming up on the calendar." He hadn't been big on holidays ever since his parents decided he wasn't a welcome guest anymore, and the last few years he'd hardly had spare time for being sentimental and celebrating. Still, he should have known this would hit Jared hard.

Jared sniffed and stood up, wiping the back of his hand under his nose. "It's part of why I want to do this. Otherwise I'm going to be a serious bear to live with the next month and a half."

"Is that why you're having the nightmares, too?" Jensen asked.

That got him a one-shouldered shrug. "Maybe? I guess. I was thinking about it today, and maybe you're right. I should try and find someone to talk to about it all, because it's not going away by itself. Maybe Alex could suggest someone."

"If you're ready." Jensen reached up and cupped his cheek, trying to convey his support and his caring through his eyes. "I don't want to make you do anything you don't want to."

"Then don't make me stay here when I could do some good in Sydney." Jared gave him a firm look and pressed on, "You'll be right there with me, and it'll be fine. I can do it. I want to do it."

Jensen let out a gusty sigh. "Let me think about it?" he asked, although he knew he'd be saying yes and that it was more a matter of coming to terms with the possibility than making up his mind.

"Sure," Jared said quickly, bending down to give him a kiss. 

Jensen gladly responded, putting a hand to the back of Jared's neck when he started to pull away. They'd been spending less time together lately as both of their jobs grew busier—sometimes it felt like the only time he saw Jared was falling asleep next to him—and Jensen wondered if that might not be part of the tension he sometimes felt between them as well.

Right now, there was another kind of tension starting to coil inside of him, and Jensen caressed the short hairs at the back of Jared's neck while his tongue prodded gently at Jared's lips. When they parted, he slipped inside and slowly, insistently, moved his tongue in and out of Jared's mouth in a deliberate echo of a different kind of motion.

Jared grinned against his mouth, letting himself be tongue-fucked for a moment before drawing back. "You didn't get enough last night?" he asked, eyes twinkling.

"That was for medicinal purposes," Jensen said, making his eyes wide and innocent. "Besides, we had a fight and so we need to make up."

"Oh, is that right?" Jared asked, his face the picture of solemnity.

"Absolutely," Jensen said, leaning in for another kiss.

Jared's arms tightening around him for a second was all the warning he got before he was being lifted up and deposited on the kitchen counter. "Jay," he protested as the remains of his dinner preparation went sliding back against the wall.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jared grinned against Jensen's mouth and stepped up to the counter, Jensen's legs spreading to accommodate him. Neither of them was hard yet, but it felt good to rub up against Jensen as their tongues entangled in a wet, heated dance. 

Jensen's hands were already sliding up under his shirt, and Jared sighed at the warm touch on his skin. "Mmmm," he murmured into Jensen's mouth. "You gonna start stripping me here, or should we take this somewhere more comfortable?"

"Feels pretty comfortable to me," Jensen returned, bringing his legs up and around Jared's hips, locking his ankles together somewhere around the backs of Jared's knees. His hands slid up Jared's torso, warm and sure, and Jared shivered at the touch. 

Lifting his arms, Jared waited as Jensen pushed his shirt up and over his head. Jared's sweats were already riding low on his hips, and when Jensen's hands came back down, his thumbs slid over Jared's hipbones. The touch made Jared squirm where he stood, wanting those hands to move farther down. Jensen was giving him a wicked look, like he knew just what Jared wanted and was going to take great pleasure in denying him as long as he could.

Jared might have learned a few things about how Jensen's mind worked over the past eight months. 

He brought his own hands up and rubbed his thumbs over Jensen's nipples, right through the oxford cloth of his shirt. Jensen groaned softly at the touch, shifting slightly closer. Now they _were_ both hard, and as jeans came into contact with lightweight shorts, the friction behind the layers of clothing was exactly the right kind of tease.

Jared ducked his head and mouthed at Jensen's neck, nosing away the collar of his shirt to get at the skin. Jensen arched his head back to make it easier, and Jared glanced up quickly to make sure that Jensen wasn't on a countertop that had cabinets overhead. Their first attempt at christening the kitchen had gone badly, although at least the frozen vegetables had been close at hand to keep the bump on Jensen's head from getting too big. At the time, Jared had counted it as a victory that he could distract Jensen to the extent that he lost track of his surroundings like that, even if he hadn't gotten laid as a result.

Reassured that no one was likely to get maimed, Jared started unbuttoning Jensen's shirt with one hand, slipping the other inside as soon as there was enough room to start touching his already-hardened nipples. Jensen's moan was lower now, the more relaxed sound that came from knowing this was going somewhere and wasn't a tease. When his hand slipped under the back of Jared's waistband and started fondling his ass, Jared made that same noise in response, lips pressed to the skin over Jensen's collarbone.

They kissed and touched for a while, knowing by now where to go to instantly rile the other up, but also where to go to draw things out, stoke the fires but not make them flare into the instant _want need now_ that Jared would always remember from the first time they came together in the confines of a train car. He'd already decided their next vacation was going to involve taking the train down the California coast, a beautiful journey along the water's edge that Jared expected to miss almost every minute of, given how likely it was to make him horny.

A nip at his chest brought him back to the present, and he looked down to see Jensen's lush lips closing around one of his nipples, drawing it into his mouth before sucking and laving at it. Jared arched forward with a groan, letting the pleasure wash over him before finishing his work of taking off Jensen's shirt. As soon as Jensen's torso was free, Jared went to work on his pants, loosening the belt and the first button. It took a lot of concentration, given what Jensen was doing to his chest, but he eventually managed.

"Up," he said, and Jensen wrapped his arms around Jared's shoulders and lifted his hips enough for Jared to slide off his jeans and underwear. He gave a little yelp as his bare ass contacted the tile countertop, and Jared couldn't help but snicker. "Dude, next time it's your ass on the tile," Jensen grumbled, but from the way he was leaning back on his elbows, bowed legs spreading wide as Jared pulled his jeans off the rest of the way, he wasn't minding it too much. Jared's dick twitched helplessly at the sight, and he dropped Jensen's jeans to the floor and quickly pulled off his own clothing.

"There's still something in the drawer, I think," Jensen said, nodding toward the counter behind Jared. His voice was steady, but his cheeks were flushed and his breath was coming faster.

Jared reached back blindly behind him, not wanting to take his eyes off the vision before him. Jensen was sprawled back on his elbows, cock curving toward his stomach, body lean and perfect and oh-so-willing. Jared had to bite his lip to distract himself from the sight. His hand closed over the drawer pull and he yanked it out, fumbling through the miscellaneous odds-and-ends until he felt the smooth foil he was looking for and let out a crow of triumph.

Jensen's eyes crinkled at the corners in a fond smile, and Jared beamed back at him. When they'd first moved in, in the "honeymoon" phase of the first month or so, they'd learned to stash small bottles of lube and strips of condoms in every room of the house. They hadn't taken advantage of any of the secret caches in a while, and Jared got a thrill from remembering how they'd been so eager so often at the start.

_God, it's not like you're an old married couple now, Padalecki_ , he told himself, wincing inwardly at the wrong name. Somehow, the voice in his head still hadn't learned that he was Jacob Hanson now.

"Jay?" Jensen asked, starting to sit up, and the way his expression was starting to change into concern was not at all what Jared was going for.

He gave a sultry smile. "Just trying to decide what I want to do with you," he said, putting the supplies on the counter next to Jensen. With one arm, he leaned forward and pulled Jensen closer, so his ass was almost hanging off the edge. Jensen braced his arms against the tile and spread his legs wider, giving Jared a full view.

Jared snapped open the lube and coated his fingers, prepping Jensen quickly and easily. He avoided the spot that Jensen was trying to get him to find, squirming around on Jared's fingers to no avail. Jared grinned, and Jensen growled. "Patience, Jen," he soothed, his other hand roaming over the insides of Jensen's thighs but not touching his cock, which was glistening at the tip with the unmistakable sign of Jensen's readiness. "We'll get there."

"Better get there soon," Jensen grumbled. He shifted his weight onto his left elbow and started jacking himself off with his right hand, long, slow strokes that had his head falling back and his lips parting on a moan.

Jared would have slapped his hand away except that he was too transfixed by the sight. "Shit, Jen," he whispered. "So fucking hot."

He wiped his fingers off on a nearby dishtowel, something he'd no doubt catch hell from Jensen for later, and hurriedly unrolled the condom onto his cock, struggling to keep from shooting off at the touch. Jensen was giving himself one last stroke before bracing both elbows back on the counter for Jared.

Grabbing Jensen's thigh with one hand and himself with the other, Jared lined up and pushed in, slow and steady and fucking awesome. The tight heat around him was almost more than he could stand, and he eased off for a minute to let Jensen adjust and to calm himself down before this ended too quickly.

Jensen's heels came up to the small of his back and pulled him forward, sliding in all the way whether he wanted to or not. "Jesus," Jared muttered, clutching Jensen's thighs tighter, trying not to stumble and pull them both onto the floor.

"Not much I can do from here, Jay," Jensen practically purred, rolling his hips anyway. "So whenever you're ready…"

Jared started slow, with long, deep thrusts that had Jensen's forearms straining as he braced himself against the countertop. It felt like the part of his daily run where he was leaving the beach behind and heading up the hill toward home, rising higher and higher with each motion, hearing the steady rush of the waves behind him like the inexorable pull of pleasure that was slowly taking him over, pulling him under. 

Then he leaned forward, one arm coming up behind Jensen to pull him closer, Jensen's hard cock rubbing between their abs. He swallowed Jensen's groans with a deep kiss that had Jared's tongue penetrating into Jensen's body at the same rate as his cock, and the shudders Jensen was giving suggested he was already getting close.

Jared shifted his sweaty grip on Jensen's thigh, pulling it open and pushing himself deeper, and the low groan and buck of Jensen's hips told him he'd finally hit that spot. Getting lost in the sensations, Jared gripped the edge of the counter and thrust harder, his own helpless noises of pleasure mingling with Jensen's in the quiet of the kitchen. "Come on," he growled against Jensen's mouth, nipping and sucking at his full lips. "Touch yourself. Come on."

Jared tightened his arm around Jensen to hold him up as he obeyed, raising one hand to wrap around his cock and give it a couple of slow strokes to spread the glistening liquid issuing from the tip. Then he started pumping harder, faster even than the rhythm of Jared's thrusts, his face lined with effort and ecstasy, lips parted and cheeks flushing as he tossed his head back and forth.

It was the way Jensen's whole body went tense in Jared's arms as his eyes slammed shut that sent Jared over the edge with him. He couldn’t help but shout as he buried himself deep inside Jensen, feeling muscles clench around him in Jensen's own spasms of pleasure, wringing Jared's orgasm out of him.

He gasped into the crook of Jensen's neck as he gave his final, more languid thrusts, and then he simply clutched Jensen to him, feeling Jensen's breaths coming fast and hot against his shoulder. Jensen's hand ran down his side, soothing but sticky, and Jared nuzzled closer to him. "Awesome," he murmured happily.

Jensen's low, contented chuckle in his ear was one of his favorite sounds in the world. "Yes, I am," he agreed.

Jared playfully nipped at his earlobe. "So full of yourself."

Jensen's eyes twinkled. "Right now I'm full of you."

Jared groaned. "Yeah, but you love it."

"Yeah, I kinda do," Jensen admitted, biting his kiss-swollen lower lip.

It was the closest that he ever got to saying the words that Jared wanted to hear but understood that Jensen wasn't ready for, and he'd learned to accept them for what they were. "Love you, too," he murmured, giving Jensen a peck on the lips before holding him close, enjoying the feel of the sweat and other fluids between them, messy and sticky though it was.

They still had more to talk about, and Jared had a decision to make, but for now it was enough to be together and enjoy their afterglow. There would be time enough for decision-making later.


	5. Book 1 (Morro Bay), Chapter 5

Three days later, the decision had been made. Jensen had notified the head of his department that he needed a few days off for urgent family business. Jared had similarly made his excuses at the clinic, promising that he would only be gone for a week. There were a few days of intensive training for Jared planned at Ravenswood's San Francisco offices, then the trip to Sydney, and then the meeting with Adil Remhani, the man who was refusing to speak to anyone except Sam Winchester. 

Once Jared had agreed to Alex's request, he demanded to know everything they knew about Remhani, without Jensen even having to tell him. Alex sent them an actual manila file folder with all of the details, which were disappointingly scant. Remhani had been recruited by Ravenswood to provide information on suspected terrorist groups in Indonesia. He had grown up on Bali and was fluent in multiple local languages. They'd only worked with him on short assignments for a couple of years, building trust until they were confident that he wasn't there as a double agent. He'd been the one to come to them and suggest that he use the contacts he'd built up to infiltrate one of the groups he'd been shadowing, and, after a long discussion, they'd agreed. It was potentially valuable information, and since he was offering himself instead of risking one of their own people, it made sense to do it. All it took was a final meeting to iron out the details of where and how Adil would make contact again.

Jensen barely remembered Sam taking the assignment. He'd been in the middle of six months of enforced inactivity after the narrowly-averted subway attack in Paris, his leg broken after landing on it the wrong way when an accomplice of the bomber they were after pushed him onto the metro tracks and he barely rolled out of the way before a train came through. He remembered being worried that his leg wouldn't heal properly and that he'd be stuck on the sidelines for the rest of his life. He remembered worrying about Sam, out there alone without anyone to watch his back, even if it was a low-risk assignment. 

He remembered Sam sending him a postcard from Bali, some stupid thing with palm trees and women in bikinis, and Jensen had promptly printed out a photo of Sam and pasted his head on top of one of them. He'd gotten a rare guffaw of laughter for that when Sam came back and saw it on the refrigerator. 

He'd never heard a word about the operation itself.

After a handful of initial reports from Remhani, Ravenswood had never heard another word, either. Not until three weeks ago, when a coded message had come into their Sydney office that they verified as coming from him, based on the old protocols he and Sam had worked out. He wanted to come in and tell them what he had learned, but because so much time had passed and he wasn't sure who he could trust, Sam was the only one he would talk to. 

And so Jared was taking a crash course in "how to be Sam Winchester," which left Jensen with plenty of time to think. 

Ravenswood had sent a car for them, and the journey was made mostly in silence. Jared spent it poring over the file that had come along with the car, all of the facts and figures about Sam Winchester that his employer had assembled over the years and stored in non-hackable paper format. Jared had offered to let him take a peek, but Jensen had shaken his head and looked out the window instead. He knew Sam, and the spare details laid out in a file folder weren't going to change what he knew. It made him wonder what was in his own file, but he wasn't any more interested in looking at that than at Sam's.

When they'd gone up to Monterey a few months ago, they'd taken the coast road, winding and dramatic and one of the most beautiful drives Jensen could remember. He'd been surprised that Jared had suggested the destination, given the connection to Jensen's past, but it had done him some good to see the familiar places where he'd spent so much time.

_How ironic_ , Jensen thought, staring out the window at the considerably less exciting view as they entered the agricultural fields of the Salinas Valley. Now he was being asked to not only dig up the past, but immerse himself and Jared in it, and he _really_ wasn't looking forward to that. _It's only for a day_ , he told himself. _One day of keeping Remhani satisfied, and we're done._

Next to him in the luxurious leather back seat, Jared sighed and tried to stretch out, the roomy space still not enough for his long legs. "How're you doing?" Jensen asked.

Jared closed the file folder. "I've read it all. What there is, at least. You'd think an organization that's as devoted to ferreting things out as Ravenswood is would have more background on one of its employees."

"I'm sure mine's not much thicker," Jensen said, nodding at the slim folder.

Jared waggled his eyebrows. When Jensen rolled his eyes, he smirked briefly before going serious. "Can you tell me something?"

"I can try," Jensen replied.

Jared turned sideways, bringing his knee up onto the seat. "Do you remember when you first met Sam?"

"Yes," Jensen replied without hesitation.

"What was your first impression?"

Jensen gave a small smile. "I was scared to death of him. It was the first day of the orientation of the new students at the Defense Language Institute, and I was doing part of the orienting. I saw him across the room: he was tall like you and bulked out even more, and he was glaring at me like he wanted to kill me."

Jared blinked at him. "What?"

Jensen shook his head. "He told me much later that I reminded him of his brother who'd died a couple of years earlier, and it freaked him out. That made a lot more sense, but all I could think of that first day was how dangerous he looked."

Jared tapped the folder with one finger. "It says here that he didn't need a lot of training once you guys started at Ravenswood. What does that mean?"

"He said he'd always been good at faking it, kind of made a joke out of it, but I'm not sure that's what it was." Jensen shifted in his seat. "Same with the physical training. He said his family had done a lot of hunting, and that was why he was so good at the ninja stuff, but I'm not sure what hunting had to do with small arms. He could strip down a Glock as fast as anyone with a military background, and he knew how to handle a knife pretty damn well, too."

"Shit." Jared wiped his hand over his jaw, a nervous gesture he'd apparently picked up from Jensen. "Not like I can learn that in a few days."

"Not like you have to," Jensen retorted. "There aren't going to be any guns or knives involved, okay?"

"Yeah, I know. I just want to get a feel for what he was like, you know? More than what's in here," and he tapped the folder again.

"You into method acting?" Jensen teased.

"Not really." There was a slight flush on Jared's cheeks. "I mean, I did drama in high school and college, but I never had any training or anything. I don't think I'm really the type to take up method, anyway."

Jensen nodded. "Neither was Sam. He could put on and take off these personas like they were clothing, but he never let any of them go too deep." Except for the one he wore most of the time, Jensen thought, but that had become so ingrained, it was hard to tell what was real and what was fake, even when Jensen was the person who knew him better than anyone else in the world.

"So I should just look big and scary?" Jared asked. "Except I'm supposed to be all comforting and reassuring for this guy who's been undercover with terrorists for four years."

"It'll help when you watch the recordings," Jensen said. "He just—he moved differently than you, but I'm not sure how to explain it. More like a big, prowling cat and less like a big, bounding puppy dog."

"Woof," Jared said before sticking his tongue out and panting, a twinkle in his eye.

Jensen rolled his eyes again, but he felt a grin sliding over his face. There was no way this little exercise was not going to lead to him comparing Sam and Jared, but as long as the differences stayed strictly delineated in his head, that was okay. Maybe it would be good for him to let himself think about Sam. He'd shut off all thoughts of him after losing him so abruptly, using the loss to fuel his crusade as Dean Winchester. Maybe it was time to let some of the memories back in and see how much they still hurt.

Jared had tilted his head to the side, expression quizzical, and he looked so much like an actual puppy dog that Jensen gave a soft laugh. "You'll be fine," he said, reaching out to lay a hand over Jared's thigh. 

"I already _am_ fine," Jared retorted, but his warm smile was a clear _thank you_ for Jensen's words.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A day later, Jared was anything but fine. He was hungry and tired, and his eyes ached from watching hour after hour of recordings from Sam's time at Ravenswood, sitting in a secure room in the basement of a San Francisco skyscraper. The only recordings that Alex would let him listen to involved Remhani, and Jared played them over and over, listening to every nuance of Sam's speech. 

There was no accent that Jared could discern; maybe the occasional flat Midwestern vowel, but there were drawled words here and there as well, and Jared eventually figured it was just the outcome of a childhood spent all over the country. He'd already worked on eliminating the Texas from his own speech—Jacob Hanson was from L.A.—so there wasn't much to worry about in that respect.

When he watched the recordings without the sound, it was mannerisms and body language that he focused on. All he had were debriefings from Ravenswood, so there was no role Sam was trying to play other than earnest employee. The first thing Jared noticed was that Sam seemed to hunch his shoulders more than Jared did, as if he was trying to make himself smaller. Jared had long ago given up on that, figuring that God had made him enormous and that he'd best take advantage of it if he could. 

The other differences were ones that he wasn't sure how to exploit. When Sam entered the room, even an interrogation room, he sized up the room and everyone in it within a matter of seconds and positioned himself accordingly, with a wall at his back and never with anyone between him and an exit, unless it was Jensen. This surveillance wasn't entirely subtle, as if Sam was making a point of the fact that he was checking out his surroundings, even within the safe confines of a Ravenswood office.

They'd left Jared in a room with a mirror and more recordings than he could watch in the forty-eight hours he had. Jared periodically stood up and approached himself in the mirror, trying to imitate that easy grace that he'd always wanted for himself but never mastered with his long limbs. His first attempts at the casually surveillant look had him snorting at himself for his lack of stealth. He went back to the DVD player and studied Sam's expressions more closely, the way he held his body, the way he conveyed entire sentences with just a look.

He did _not_ get jealous of how in some of the recordings, Jensen was able to communicate back just as effortlessly, the two of them looking like they were reading each other's minds, the subtle expressions on their faces changing almost faster than Jared could follow.

Jared took a break with lunch, riding the elevator up to a rooftop garden that overlooked the harbor. He munched on a dry turkey-on-wheat from the building's cafeteria and breathed in the fresh air, wondering what he was going to have to do to convince Adil Remhani that he was Sam Winchester. Tourists were wandering back and forth over the Embarcadero, enjoying the mild November weather, and he made a mental note to take Jensen to the city once they got back from Australia. Maybe he'd be a little less shy about expressing public affection on the streets of San Francisco, which Jensen would probably enjoy. 

Back in the basement, Alex was waiting for him with another folder. "This is everything we know about the group Remhani joined up with," he said, dropping it on the table. He had rings around his eyes that made him look older than usual, and his shirt and suit jacket were as rumpled as ever. "Jensen's looking over another copy upstairs."

Jared nodded and pulled the folder toward him. It would probably be a good break from poring over images of his dead doppelganger, and it was information he needed to know just as well.

As he read, Jared thought that he organization Remhani had volunteered to infiltrate didn't sound like a terrorist group so much as a cult. The information Ravenswood had on them included detailed conversations about demons and angels and a last battle that sounded positively apocalyptic. The State Department had interpreted it all as a metaphor for Islamic terror groups targeting the West, but to Jared's mind, that seemed too much like seeing what they wanted to see rather than paying attention to the actual information being shared.

When he shared that observation with Alex, the older man nodded. "That's good, Jay. We thought the same way when we presented our findings. But State was bound and determined that this was the clear sign of attempts to step up attacks in places like Bali, and so they gave us additional funding to support Remhani in his mission."

"What ever happened to him?" Jared asked. "And the group?"

"He reported back regularly at first, just lists of names and places, but nothing indicating they were planning any kind of attack at home or abroad. Then his reports became less frequent, and then about a year after Sam saw him off, we stopped hearing from him. The organization dropped off our radar about another year after that."

"Huh." Jared flipped through the pages in the file folder. "What was this bit about the last words?"

"Ah, yes. That was a kind of personal code, not written down with the formal protocols. The idea was for both parties entering into an operation to record somewhere a key phrase or word from their final conversation before the operation began, an extra check on their identity when they meet again. Alternatively, should something happen to one of the parties and a substitute be needed, this code could be passed on."

"So why isn't that the case here?" Jared asked. "Why not explain to Remhani what happened to Sam and use a substitute?"

Alex sighed and folded his hands in front of him on the table. "Because once we passed the message on up to our contacts at State, they insisted that everything be done that this man wants. They're still convinced that he's the key to taking down an entire terrorist network based on what he's learned in the last four years, and they won't authorize anything that might jeopardize that." He spread his hands wide. "And they're the ones who pay the bills."

"Even if you don't agree with what they want you to do," Jared guessed.

Alex gave him a rueful smile. "I wanted to leave you and Jon alone and never darken your doorstep until I could tell you that Raimundo Odilon had been captured or killed. But I was overridden."

Jared chewed that over for a moment, hesitated, and then decided that he should admit something. "Jen's been bugging me to get in touch with you anyway."

"Why?" Alex asked sharply.

"Because." Jared shrugged and looked down, unseeing eyes roaming over the documents in the folder. "You should probably know this before I go to work for you. I've kinda been having a hard time lately, nightmares and stuff. I thought they would go away, but they're getting worse, and it might just be because the holidays are coming up, but I think I'm driving Jen nuts. And he's a worrywart, you know, so he thinks I should talk to someone about it."

"Do you think you should talk to someone about it?" Alex asked gently.

He let out a sigh. "I don't know. Yes? I mean, it's just bad dreams."

He hadn't realized he was fidgeting with the pages until Alex laid a hand over his, stilling the motion. "I would have said that if it was still May or June, right after your upheaval and relocation. But all these months later…it's a sign that something's not right in your head. You're a doctor, you know about untreated infections. It's the same thing with your psyche."

"It doesn't mean I can't do this," he said, abruptly looking up and meeting Alex's eyes. "I don't want you to think I'm trying to get out of it or something."

"You can if you want," Alex replied. "You can always change your mind."

Jared shook his head firmly. "I'm going to do this. I need to do this. I just thought maybe you could recommend someone for me to talk to once we're back in California."

He got a fatherly pat on the hand before Alex withdrew. "I can definitely do that."

Jared sighed, his shoulders relaxing. "Thanks."

That was one less thing to worry about. Now all he had to do in the next thirty-six hours was learn the details of a suspected terrorist organization from four years ago and slip into the skin of his boyfriend's former lover. 

Piece of cake.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jensen woke up alone for the first time in eight months, and he hated it. Without Jared's furnace of a body beside him, the sheets felt cold even though he'd been under them all night. Even on the increasingly frequent occasions when Jared had risen with a nightmare and never returned to bed, his warmth had somehow been retained in the bed, and there was always his scent on the pillow. Not that Jensen ever buried his face in the pillow to breathe in that scent and lull himself back to sleep. He wasn't sentimental enough to do something like that.

Throwing an arm over his eyes, Jensen let out a sigh. It was for the best while Jared was cramming for his "how to be Sam Winchester" exam of sorts, coming up later today. But he hadn't realized how bad he had it for Jared until sometime around midnight, when he realized he was going to have to fall asleep by himself and that he didn't know if he could do it. _Get a grip_ , he'd told himself, along with a reminder that he'd fallen asleep in much less comfortable locations than a San Francisco hotel with a concierge that would probably tuck you in if you asked. Come to think of it, they'd probably make a discreet call to find someone to "tuck you in," but there'd only been one person Jensen wanted with him last night.

He rose and showered, half expecting Jared to come bounding in after his morning run with the dog. It only happened once a week or so; one or both of them were usually expected at work, but the complete openness that sharing a shower implied was something Jensen had gotten used to. Slowly but surely, Jared had worn his way straight into Jensen's life and his heart, and he couldn't imagine being without him anymore.

Of course, for the next few days, he'd have to do just that. At least for today, Jared's second and final day of preparation, and if not for tomorrow's flight to Australia, then at least once they got there. Jensen had outlined a plan of attack with Alex yesterday, memorizing where Ravenswood's Sydney office was located, all of the approaches and exits to the coffee shop across the street where Jared and Adil would be meeting, and which of the five million things that could go wrong they could actually plan for. If Alex noted that he was more cautious than usual about thinking of every possible contingency and a way around it, he didn't say anything.

He read the files they had on Remhani's organization and didn't know what to think. Finally, he decided that whether or not it was a legitimate terrorist organization, the State Department certainly thought so, and since they wanted whatever intel Remhani had managed to gather, they were going to have to go through with this.

In the afternoon, Jensen went for a long walk around the city, sunglasses and ball cap firmly in place, trying on his old Dean Winchester habit of keeping careful watch on the people and places around him. He found that after a few hours of feeling clumsy and conspicuous, the old persona settled over him like a well-worn, comfortable leather jacket. Not that he was going to be reprising his role anytime soon, but it was good to know that he hadn't forgotten how to play it.

Jensen roamed through the throngs of tourists along the waterfront, up the steep hills and down again, through Golden Gate Park and back on a streetcar. When he arrived at the Ravenswood offices, a nondescript building in the middle of the central business district, commuters were hurrying to their subways and ferries, and he practiced tailing a few of them surreptitiously, long enough to note that he still had his skills.

He hoped to God that he wasn't going to need them.

When he returned to the office, they were waiting for him. Alex asked him to enter a room on the see-through side of the one-way glass, and he did so, looking into a plain, white-walled room with a table and chairs that looked like an interrogation room anywhere in the world. 

A short, dark-skinned man entered the room and took a seat, fidgeting even though he was clearly trying to hide it. "Playing the part of Adil," Alex murmured. "He's been practicing with Jay, and it's been going fine."

"Good," Jensen muttered, fighting down his own urge to tap his foot or drum his fingers against his thigh. He knew what was coming—Alex had explained it to him yesterday, and it made perfect sense. It also made him nervous as hell for a thousand different reasons.

Inside the room he was watching, the door opened. And Sam Winchester walked in.

Jensen drew in a sharp breath. He was wearing a worn grey hoodie with a plaid shirt underneath and jeans that looked like they'd been through the wash a few hundred times. His shoulders were bent forward slightly, but it was obvious that they were broad and muscled. His eyes swept the room, lingering briefly on the visible and hidden surveillance cameras, flicking across Jensen and Alex as if he could see them through the wall. 

Then he moved forward, all catlike grace and spare, unwasted movements, and Jensen found himself putting a hand up to the glass as if he could touch him. His heart was twisting painfully in his chest, and even though he _knew_ that it wasn't Sam in there, it was all he could do to keep from dashing out of this room and into that one and falling onto his knees and apologizing.

Instead, he watched with his hand pressed flat against the glass as they play-acted the scene they were expecting in Sydney. Now that the initial shock was wearing off, Jensen noticed half a dozen little things that reminded him this was Jared, not Sam, and he made a mental note to pass them along. Some of them, like eye color, he couldn't do anything about, but he could warn Jared about being too friendly toward the informant. 

It didn't occur to him until much later, when Jared had bashfully poked his head in the door and wondered if he was any good, what it was that Jensen wanted to apologize _for_. Even then, it wasn't something he should be putting a name to, not now, and so he shut it up inside of himself and moved forward to give Jared a literal pat on the back and start going over his performance.

There'd be plenty of time to deal with it later.


	6. Book 1 (Morro Bay), Chapter 6

Jared had already watched three movies, and they weren't even halfway there yet. He let out a sigh and wriggled around in his seat, trying to get more comfortable. He knew that he shouldn't complain—business class, even on a thirteen-hour flight, was so much more comfortable than the coach seat he'd been crammed into on his flight to Germany last year, the only flight he'd ever taken that was comparable to this in length. It _was_ nice to be able to stretch his legs out completely, something he'd never managed on an airplane before. But sitting still for thirteen hours was sitting still. And even though he was by the window, that did him no good—it was dark out, and there was nothing but water out there anyway.

He drummed his fingers on the wide seat rest between his seat and Jensen's. Jensen had put the complementary blanket over himself almost as soon as they'd taken off, closed his eyes, and hadn't moved since. Jared envied his ability to fall asleep so quickly; he'd never quite managed that trick, even in med school when every moment asleep was like gold. 

He could go over the file tucked into his carry-on one more time, but he had memorized it already. They would land, a car would pick them up and take them to the meeting place, and Adil would show up as they'd planned. Jared knew what codes to say in order to verify that he was who he claimed to be (ha!) and the responses Adil was supposed to give. After that, all he had to do was listen and rely on the recording devices that would be tucked into his ear and under his shirt to do their job. 

Jared flipped through the screens with selections of movies one more time, and even though under other circumstances he would have been interested in seeing an Australian-produced film that wasn't likely to show up on Netflix, he wouldn't be able to concentrate. He'd already watched two action thrillers and a romcom, and while they'd served as a good distraction, once they were over, his mind was running along the same paths as before. 

Did he really think he could get away with this, pretending to be someone so different from himself as Sam Winchester? Jared wasn't a secret agent or whatever the hell Ravenswood's people called themselves. By all accounts, he should have been killed multiple times over during his adventures with an amnesiac Jensen, escaping only by luck or by Jensen's still-functioning instincts. What if Jensen was right to be worried about this job? What if something happened that none of them had prepared for, if things went south as rapidly as Jensen feared they would and Jared was thrown in the deep end before he could do anything about it? 

"Hey," Jensen's gravelly voice came from his right. 

Jared turned to see his boyfriend leaning up on his elbows, regarding him from his fully-reclined seat. The seats had pod-like enclosures over the top, so that when sitting upright, it looked like a normal seat, but if you reclined flat, you had a small amount of privacy and darkness over your head. Jared hadn't even tried to recline yet, too wired and nervous to even contemplate sleep. "Hey," he said in response, shooting Jensen a quick smile.

Jensen pressed the button to bring the seat partway up, already looking completely awake and alert. "How're you doing?"

"Okay." He gestured at the screen on the back of the seat in front of him. "Got a lot of movies left to watch, you know."

"Uh huh." Jensen reached across the console between them and laid a hand on his arm. "You should try and get some sleep. There's still seven hours to go; you could use the rest for tomorrow."

"Yeah, I know," Jared replied, sharper than he intended. When Jensen's hand tightened fractionally on his arm, he sighed. "Sorry. Just crabby from being trapped in here with hours yet to come."

"You ever been on a flight this long?" Jensen asked.

"No." Jared shook his head. "Just the trip to Europe…you know."

"Yeah." Jensen's foot reached out and gave Jared's calf a gentle kick. "At least you can stretch your legs out here, not like in steerage."

"Yeah, it helps," Jared agreed. His fingers drummed on the seat rest again. "But you know how bad I am at sitting still," he said with a half-laugh.

"I sure do," Jensen said. His hand moved up and down Jared's arm, and his voice lowered as he bent closer. The cabin lights were down and from what Jared had seen, almost everyone else in the cabin was asleep except for the glow of a laptop or a TV screen here and there, but they weren't exactly alone. "You know that it's okay to be nervous. Right?"

"I'm not nervous," he replied automatically. 

It wasn't until Jensen kicked his leg again that he realized he was jiggling it up and down, and he rolled his eyes and shifted his leg away. "Okay, so maybe a little, but it's no big deal."

There was a pause. Then Jensen raised his chair all the way upright and leaned closer. "Talk to me," he said quietly. Though the lights in the cabin were dim, Jared could clearly see the gleam of Jensen's green eyes, shot through with worry and concern.

Jared pointedly looked around and then back at him. "Can't really do that here."

"You're smart. You can figure out a way." Jensen's hand slid down his arm to take his hand, closing around his fingers in a warm, comforting grip.

"I'm fine," Jared said, yanking his hand away. He reached for the pocket where the blanket was stored and pulled it out. "I should probably try and get some sleep, like you said."

"Not like this, you won't," Jensen said, exasperation entering his tone. "What do you mean, it's no big deal?"

"I mean that I can do this," Jared replied, taking care to keep his voice down. "No second thoughts, no changing my mind." A little voice piped up in his head that he'd been having _exactly_ those kind of thoughts not five minutes ago, but he shushed it. He had to make it clear to Jensen that he wasn't regretting his decision to go along with Alex's plan.

"That's not what I asked," Jensen said more insistently. "I mean, yeah, we can turn around at any time if you don't want to go through with this—"

"I won't," Jared snapped back. "I'm not backing out. Not now, and not when we get there."

He unfolded the blanket and spread it over his legs, partially reclining the seat so that his head moved partway back into the podlike structure. He could feel the weight of Jensen's stare as he did so, but he ignored it.

Finally, he couldn't fiddle with the seat controls or the blanket any longer, and he looked up to find Jensen still watching him. "What?"

For answer, Jensen unbuckled his seatbelt and stood up in a low crouch. "Move over."

Jared frowned at him, puzzled. The bulkhead was right behind him. "Where do you want me to go?"

"Roll onto your side," Jensen murmured, moving toward him.

Jared's eyebrows shot up, but he obeyed, shifting backwards as he moved onto his right side. Even with the spacious business class seat, there was barely enough room for the two of them to fit on their sides as Jensen carefully climbed up next to him. They were tightly pressed together from shoulders to feet, awkwardly bent sideways with the seat in the shape it was.

Jensen reached behind him without looking and pressed the button to lower the seat the rest of the way. Jared gave a surprised squeak as the surface below his elbow lowered and the surface under his legs started to elevate. Jensen's warm chuckle was nearly in his ear, and then he shifted even closer and pulled Jared's blanket over the both of them. With their heads inside the privacy pod and their legs intertwined under the blanket, anyone passing down the aisle would think there was only one person on the seat.

"Don't tell me you're trying to join the Mile High Club," Jared muttered as he shifted his position until one arm was under Jensen's neck and the other was wrapping over his side and around his back.

"Been there, done that," Jensen murmured. His left arm came under Jared's side where there was a gap between the back and bottom seat cushions, his right arm mirroring Jared's hold on his back. "I figured we could talk more easily like this."

Any advantage the business class seats provided in terms of roominess had just gone out the window, but on the bright side, Jared now had an armful of Jensen, nose buried in his neck and Jensen's whiskey-smooth voice in his ear. "About what?" he stalled.

"I meant it, Jay," Jensen said, his breath soft and warm on Jared's neck. "It's okay to be nervous."

They'd had conversations like this any number of times in the quiet dark of their California house, one of them awakened from a nightmare and needing to talk about it but not wanting to do it in the harshness of a lit room. So one of them would hold the other, or maybe they'd just clasp hands for the reassurance of the contact, and then they would talk. The darkness made it okay somehow, the other's reassuring voice a reminder that they weren't alone, but not having to face the person they were talking to made it easier to share what was really going on in their head.

At least that was the way it worked for Jared.

"I know," he said quietly. Jensen's hand moved back and forth on his lower back, his shirttail rubbing against his skin with the movement. "I just—I don't want you to think it means something else."

He could tell from the way Jensen shifted against him that he wanted to pull back and look him in the eye, but the tight quarters made that impossible. "What else might it mean?" Jensen asked.

"That I don't want to do this. That I can't do this. Because I can, Jen, I know it. It's not that hard, and you said yourself how much I look like him." 

"I know you can," Jensen replied calmly. "I don't doubt it at all."

Jared was taken aback. "Then why have you fought this all along?"

"Because I'm worried _for_ you, not about you." Jensen sighed and shifted position, his leg coming up and over Jared's, pulling Jared's top leg forward so that it nestled between his. His voice went on into Jared's ear, "I have no doubt that you can pull this off. You look so damn much like him to start with. Hell, you remember how I got you confused with him the first time I saw you. Thought it was him about to get shot down by the river."

"Yeah, but your head was totally fucked up," Jared whispered back.

He felt Jensen's shoulders shake with a silent laugh. "Point taken," he said, amusement in his voice. "But this guy met with him for, like, a few hours four years ago. And you threw me for a loop when I saw you practicing, at least for a minute. You're going to do a fine job."

"Then what's your problem?" Jared muttered.

"It's not you I'm worried about," Jensen replied. "It's the other guy. It's the things we don't know about, the crap we can't plan for. The odds that this is all a setup of some sort and things are going to turn bad in a heartbeat. _That's_ what I'm worried about."

Jared turned his head slightly sideways and dropped a kiss on Jensen's neck. "But you'll be there watching out for me."

Jensen's hand started rubbing circles over his lower back again. "Yeah, I will. But you know how fast things can turn bad. Better than most people, as a matter of fact." 

His voice held an apology for the accusation he'd thrown at Jared in their kitchen only a few days ago, and Jared kissed his neck again in acceptance. He tucked his arms more tightly around Jensen and said, "It'll be fine. And then we'll have some time to go sightseeing after it's all over, right?"

"Hope so," Jensen muttered. His hand slipped under the back of Jared's shirt, warm on his skin. "I want to see if the kangaroos at the zoo look more gangly than you."

"Ha ha," Jared replied. He nuzzled against Jensen's neck and sighed. "Guess you better go back to your seat now."

"Why's that?" The reply was deeper than before, and Jared's breath hitched when he realized it was the tone Jensen used when he planned on doing something dirty and fun.

"Because we're on an airplane," Jared hissed back. "And there isn't enough room for two of us in one seat."

"Are you going to be able to sleep now?" Jensen asked in that same suggestive tone.

Jared considered it, but it was hard with that firm touch roaming over his lower back. "I can try."

"Not good enough." Jensen's hand dipped below the back waistband of his jeans, and Jared's cock gave a twitch at the fingers caressing his ass. "You need to be well-rested for tomorrow."

Jared drew in a deep breath, and instead of calming him, the scent of Jensen's aftershave and sweat at the nape of his neck combined with the press of their bodies to bring on a familiar tingling low in his gut. "Jen," he warned.

"Shh," Jensen replied. The hand that was reaching under Jared's side took over the place of fondling his ass, and Jensen somehow found room between their bodies for his right hand to reach for the buttons of Jared's jeans. "Can you be quiet for me?"

"What?" Jared hissed at the touch of Jensen's hand. "I don't—"

"Shh." Jensen shifted his legs so that instead of his right leg wrapping over both of Jared's, it was pushing in between them. Jared automatically shifted his hips so his left leg was over both of Jensen's, spreading his legs a little as he did so. "That's good," Jensen murmured, deftly undoing the rest of the button fly. The loosened jeans gave him more room to work in the back, and his hand slid farther down, squeezing one ass cheek before caressing it, over and over.

Jared stifled a grunt, his hips moving forward as if of their own volition, seeking out Jensen's hand. The airline blankets covered them from about mid-rib down, and it was dark in the cabin, but he wasn't sure he could keep quiet if Jensen kept going. "Jen," he murmured into his ear, hearing how breathy and aroused he sounded already and getting more turned on by the sound.

"You gotta keep quiet," Jensen replied softly, bending his head to press his lips to Jared's neck. He started to nibble and suck below Jared's ear, just how he liked it.

Then his hand pulled open the fly of Jared's jeans and his fingers delicately felt along the waistband of Jared's boxer briefs, following the seam down until he reached the front slit. When his fingers closed around Jared's cock and pulled it out, Jared's whole body shuddered as he fought to keep from crying out. "God, Jensen," he hissed desperately. He'd thought that the time Jensen tied him up to the bed was the kinkiest thing he could imagine doing, but this blew that out of the water.

Jensen angled his head so he could take Jared's earlobe in his mouth at the same time that he started stroking. The touch was rough and dry, almost too tight, but it was so warm under the blanket and inside Jensen's hand that Jared's hips bucked automatically, thrusting in and out of Jensen's grip. The wetness with which Jensen was lavishing his ear somehow felt like it was on Jared's cock, and when Jensen paused on an upstroke to rub his thumb over the head, Jared couldn't hold back a low moan.

"Shh," Jensen warned. He pulled back enough to find Jared's mouth, swallowing the little noises and gasps that Jared couldn't hold back as Jensen began to jerk him off in earnest. The seat creaked beneath them as his hips moved back and forth, and Jared tried to hold still lest the rhythmic noises give them away. 

"That's good," Jensen murmured between kisses. "So hot, Jay. So good like this, letting me do this to you."

Jared was fighting to keep still and quiet despite the increasing intensity of Jensen's hand, and somehow that focus on controlling his movements only amplified the sensation when the rough drag of Jensen's hand on his sensitive skin broke through his concentration. He gasped harshly into Jensen's mouth as a bolt of arousal shot through him. The coarse weave of the airline blanket rubbed against his sensitive head when it popped out of Jensen's hand with every downstroke, an extra bit of stimulation that might have been accidental, or, knowing Jensen, might have been part of his plan.

The world narrowed to the two of them in the dark, pressed so closely together that it was like they were one person, the slight motion of Jensen's hand under the blanket the only visible sign that anything was going on. Pressure was building slow and steady in Jared's groin, his face scrunching up in concentration, and he knew it wasn't going to take much more.

Then Jensen's other hand, which had been tracing gentle, lazy circles over Jared's ass, started moving with more purpose. One finger and then two slid between his cheeks, and Jared blindly hitched his hips higher and spread his legs as wide as he could with his jeans still on. Jensen's strokes slowed down slightly, and Jared wanted to whine with frustration, but he settled for kissing Jensen back harder, sucking that plump lower lip into his mouth and lavishing it with his tongue.

The bitten-off grunt that Jensen gave in reply was as good as a full-blown moan, and Jared grinned to himself. Then the grin fell off his face as Jensen's questing fingers started to trace around his rim, and when he realized that the circling rhythm was the same as that of Jensen's hand pumping him, speeding up again, his hips bucked forward uncontrollably.

"That's it," Jensen murmured in his ear. "You gonna come for me, Jay? You know I love watching you, but I think feeling you writhing around is going to have to do this time."

"Jensen," he whispered back, recognizing that he sounded totally wrecked but not caring about anything but the release he was chasing. His arms tightened around Jensen, his fingers digging into the muscles of his lover's back as he felt himself cresting the wave that Jensen was building for him.

"Come on, Jay," Jensen whispered, his hand twisting on Jared's cock with every upstroke, sending waves of heat through Jared's body that were about to set him ablaze. "Come for me."

The tip of one finger penetrated Jared's body, and he let out a harsh breath as his orgasm hit with a rush. He shivered and shook in Jensen's arms, unable to thrust as vigorously as he usually did given the tight quarters, but somehow the restriction on both his movement and his vocalization made the feelings more intense. "Jen," he growled, clutching Jensen tight enough to leave marks. "God!"

"Shh," Jensen soothed. His strokes slowed down but stayed firm and deliberate until Jared wriggled at the overly sensitive touch. He carefully wiped Jared off with the now-disheveled blanket and dropped it to the floor. "Think you can sleep now?" he murmured mischievously.

"Holy shit," was Jared's eloquent reply, and Jensen's low laugh rumbled between their chests. His limbs were like noodles, his body relaxed right down to its bones. He clumsily nuzzled against Jensen's neck, breathing in the musky scent of Jensen and safety and feeling content for the first time since seeing Alex Conklin in their kitchen.

It occurred to him that he should be returning the favor, but as he clumsily reached for Jensen's fly, his hand was batted away. "Not now, Jared. This was all for you."

"'S okay, I don't mind," he said, struggling to raise himself onto one elbow.

Jensen easily pushed him back down and bestowed a gentle kiss on his lips. "You can pay me back when we get there," he said softly. "After we're done."

"M'kay," Jared sleepily agreed, chasing one more kiss before he sank back into the seat with a sigh and Jensen disentangled himself to go back to his own seat.

The last thing he remembered before falling asleep was Jensen quietly asking a flight attendant for another blanket.


	7. Book 2 (Sydney), Chapter 1

Things started to go wrong almost as soon as they landed.

There were three messages waiting on Jensen's phone when he pulled it out, two from their Sydney contact and one from Alex. All of them said the same thing: Adil Remhani had contacted Ravenswood again and wasn't comfortable meeting in the central city. Instead, he'd proposed Dawes Point, at the foot of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

"Absolutely not," Jensen said as soon as he got a hold of their contact, a woman named Alice Harper. In the seat next to him, Jared was giving him a puzzled look, but he waved it off.

"Jon, I don't think he's giving us much choice." It took a moment for it to register with Jensen that of course she thought of him as Jon Enfield—Alex was one of a very small number of people that knew him as Jensen Ackles, even within Ravenswood. 

He grimaced when he realized how long he'd been out of the game—responding to his assumed name needed to be automatic no matter what the situation. It contributed to the growl in his voice as he replied, "I doubt I could come up with a more exposed site if I wanted to, unless it was at the top of the damn bridge instead of underneath it. It's not acceptable, Alice."

She gave a heavy sigh. "I'll see what I can do." Then she hung up.

"What's wrong?" Jared asked in a low voice as the plane rolled down the taxiway. He looked more alert he had a few hours ago; Jensen supposed the sleep must have done him some good, or maybe it was the hand job. For his part, Jensen had never done something so public before, but Jared hadn't seemed to mind, and it had been pretty damn hot.

Right now, though, having the favor returned was the last thing on his mind. "Our guy wants to change the meeting location. Says he thinks he's being followed."

Jared frowned. "So we should change it, right?"

"Not like this." Jensen leaned as close as he could with his seat belt still on. "He wants to meet out on Dawes Point. That's where the Harbour Bridge starts, across from the Opera House. It's an open park, lots of ways for someone to get at you and hardly any ways to get out."

Jared's frown deepened. "Then why would he want to meet there, if it's so dangerous?"

"Good question." Jensen ran his hand over his mouth. "It could be that he wants to keep it public. There're a lot of tourists who take pictures of the bridge and the Opera House from there, and there's lots of ferry traffic passing by. But it's also under the start of the bridge, the perfect place to station a sniper up in the understory."

"A sniper?" Jared practically squeaked. Outside the window of the plane, the muted roar of the engines was dying down as they were being towed in to the gate.

Jensen held up his hand. "I'm considering all of the possibilities. I don't think it's likely, but I'm not going to risk anything." He gave Jared a meaningful look. "I _can't_ risk anything."

Jared's cheeks flushed slightly. "I trust you, Jen," he said softly. "Whatever you think is best, I just—I don't want to blow it by being overly cautious, you know?"

"Yeah, I know." He shook his head. "I guess we'll figure it out when we get in."

It was rush hour as they left the airport in a Ravenswood-provided car, inching down the highway with the morning's commuters. Jensen closed his eyes and took a catnap, forcing aside the part of his brain that wanted to worry about contingencies and scenarios.

When he opened his eyes, they were in a parking garage, and Jared was looking at him with both fondness and amusement. "How're you doing, Sleeping Beauty?" he asked, casting a quick look at the privacy panel between themselves and the driver before leaning forward to kiss Jensen awake.

"Mm, better now," Jensen replied against his lips, tasting the sharpness of mint in Jared's mouth from the break they'd taken to wash up and brush their teeth upon arrival at the airport. "How 'bout you?"

"I think I'm still relaxed from earlier," Jared admitted, biting his lower lip.

Jensen grinned at him. "I'm that good."

Jared rolled his eyes and gave him another quick kiss. "I think we're here," he said as the car came to a stop.

They were ushered in to an elevator that took them on a ride long enough to make Jensen's ears pop. When they emerged, it was into a nondescript office that could have been devoted to anything from insurance to advertising. The man who'd been their driver ushered them down a long corridor, and if Jensen hadn't known what to look for in the signs on the walls and the papers stacked on people's desks, he would have had no idea what kind of work went on here. The fact that he'd worked in an almost identical office halfway around the world was the only way he knew.

When they entered a conference room, painted in bland beige with generic prints of Sydney's famous landmarks on the walls, a woman about Jared's age stood up to meet them. "I'm Alice," she said, extending a hand. She was almost as tall as Jensen, in a sharp navy pantsuit that did little to conceal the prominent bulge at her midriff.

"Jon," Jensen said, shaking her hand. 

He had apparently failed to conceal his surprise at her appearance, for she put her other hand protectively over her stomach. "I'm not exactly doing fieldwork at the moment, but I do have experience with it," she said.

"Of course," he replied, stepping back and gesturing toward Jared. "This is Jay, playing the part of Sam."

She blinked up at him. "Well, based on the pictures I've seen, you'll definitely do."

"I hope so," Jared replied, shaking her hand.

She smiled and stepped back, gesturing to the chairs in front of them. "Why don't you have a seat and we'll go over the new plan."

Jensen's jaw worked, but he kept quiet. Maybe he'd be able to poke enough holes in whatever plan they'd concocted that they'd have to go back to the original, their contact's wishes be damned. There was no way he was putting Jared in the kind of danger that an outdoor meet in such an exposed location promised. No way at all.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The next morning at 10 A.M., Jared was walking down the broad waterfront walkway around Sydney Cove, wondering if he'd ever been so nervous in his whole life. Despite Jensen's arguments yesterday, the local Ravenswood people hadn't budged. The meeting with Remhani would take place where the informant wanted it.

It was a shame Jared was skittish as could be and that his nerves were on such high alert, because otherwise he'd be gawking like all of the tourists around him. The Opera House was right across the water, the distinctively-curved white shells of the roof changing in appearance with every step he took. To his left was the looming stone wall that held up the roadway approach to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The bridge itself was a graceful arc over the water, impressive in its simplicity. 

On the top arch of the bridge, he could see little tiny figures moving in groups. A few streets back, he'd passed the offices for BridgeClimb Sydney, which must explain the people walking on the bridge. He was definitely going to do that with Jensen once this meeting was over and they had the time to play tourist. 

As the walkway curved outward, around the red sandstone of the luxury hotel on the water's edge, Jared looked back at where he'd come from and admired the view. Ferries slid through the water of the cove, large ones finishing their regular trips across the harbor and the smaller ones lining up behind them as they approached the docks of Circular Quay. The skyline immediately behind the quay wasn't that special, consisting of the same tall blue-and-grey steel and glass of any major world city. But there was something about the water being right there and the ferries and active docks making it clear that the waterfront hadn't been shunted aside or turned into a shopping mall like most of the cities he'd visited that Jared really liked.

"All clear," came Jensen's voice in his ear, and Jared felt his stomach flip nervously as he reminded himself that he wasn't there to sightsee. That would come later.

"Mm-hmm," he replied. They'd thought about fitting him with a Bluetooth or at least a cell phone close at hand, but considered that Remhani would likely be spooked off if he saw "Sam" talking to someone remotely. Instead, he had a small earpiece for direct communication and a GPS tracking unit in his shoe should he end up somewhere he wasn't expecting.

Considering that the last time he'd been walking around with a Ravenswood earpiece in place, the Panther had spotted him and snatched him before he could blink, Jared really appreciated the GPS idea. Still, it meant he couldn't talk directly back to Jensen without it looking like he was talking to himself—though that wasn't uncommon in the modern, hands-free cellphone era.

The path curved back inland, and Jared saw the expanse of grass and palm trees that he'd memorized yesterday from the photos he'd been shown. Remhani had asked to meet on the other side of the bridge, where there were fewer tourists taking pictures of the Opera House and the skyline. Jared was happier with that, especially knowing that Jensen was about a thousand yards behind him, which put him within hearing distance if Jared yelled even if for some reason the device in his ear malfunctioned. He honestly didn't think anything was going to go wrong, but if it did, it would be better to have fewer bystanders around.

The plan was for Jared to verify that it really was Adil Remhani, based upon the code words he'd worked out with Sam when they met four years ago, and for the other man to be confident that it was Sam Winchester he was talking to. That was what Jared was most nervous about. If he screwed this up, if he did anything in the first few minutes that made Remhani suspicious, it was all off and he would never forgive himself.

After verification, there was a disturbingly large number of possibilities. Jared carried a small digital voice recorder in his jacket in case Remhani was willing to talk right then and there. Alternatively, he could coax the man back into the coffeeshop across from Ravenswood's office where they were originally supposed to meet, the plan that had Jensen's hearty endorsement. Or, this might be only the first meeting of many, once trust had been established by both parties. Alice had explained all of this to him yesterday, and even though Jensen's semi-vacant expression indicated he'd heard it all before, it was new to Jared, and he soaked it up. Better to know all of the possibilities instead of being thrown for a loop at the last minute.

In the meantime, Jared had to assume that there were eyes watching him, and not only Jensen's. He'd been practicing his role ever since he left Ravenswood's building in the heart of downtown, constantly looking around himself enough to appear alert but not suspicious. He might not have been able to match Sam's walk perfectly, but he hoped it was close enough. His clothes were the same as he'd worn in San Francisco when he'd startled Jensen so badly, as Alex had told him later. 

All in all, he was as close to Sam Winchester as anyone was going to get.

At the back of his waist, well hidden under the hoodie and plaid flannel shirts, was a small handgun. One of the disadvantages of being under hire to a private organization like Ravenswood and not an actual law enforcement agency was that if the local authorities caught him with a gun, Jared couldn't flash a badge and be excused. He'd be cleared of any wrongdoing eventually—he was pretty sure—but he didn't like the idea of chancing it. It felt weird to be carrying a gun. He certainly knew how to handle one, especially after the lessons he'd insisted on getting from Jensen at the local firing range in California, but he didn't normally carry. Now, the heavy weight at his back served as another reminder that he wasn't at home anymore. Jensen had insisted, though, and Jared hadn't objected.

He'd been told to wait by a particular palm tree, and since there weren't that many, it was easy to find. Nerves strung as tight as piano wire, Jared leaned back against the tree and pretended to be taking in the view. He watched a throng of Japanese tourists take pictures of each other with the Opera House in the background, and then turn around and repeat the process with the bridge behind them instead. On another occasion, he'd offer to take pictures for the whole group at once, but not today.

"Sam." 

The voice came from behind him, not from in his ear, and Jared jumped. Hopefully that would be taken for mild nerves and not near panic, he thought as he turned around. 

Standing just to the left of the tree trunk was a short, dark-skinned man with the dark hair and distinctive light brown eyes that Jared had seen in photos of his contact. "Adil," he returned calmly. If they were going to be on a first-name basis, they might as well both be. 

"You have come a long way," Adil said quietly, stepping closer.

Jared cast a quick glance over him to make sure his hands were down at his sides and no weapons were visible. "So have you, it would seem."

"Steady," Jensen murmured softly in his ear, and the reassurance of his voice helped Jared's shoulders to relax a fraction and his hands to loosen from where they'd started to clench into fists.

"Let's walk," Adil said. He stepped back and gestured in front of him. "Under the bridge."

Jared hesitated for only a second, knowing that this was part of the plan. He didn't move entirely in front of the other man, though, keeping him in sight out of the corner of his eye. He made sure his shoulders were arched back so that his shirt and coat fell in a straight line, not giving away the bulge at the back of his waist.

The bridge soared over their heads on stone pylons, leaving the space beneath an open, grassy area. Overhead, Jared saw more groups of bridge climbers making their way along the catwalks and girders under the bridge on their way to climbing the arch above. From this closer distance, he could see they all had jumpsuits on and were tethered to a cord that ran along the catwalk. 

They came out under the bridge into the sunlight, Jared blinking as his eyes adjusted. This side of the bridge was definitely quieter; there was only a handful of people walking through the park and along the waterfront on the other side of the street that edged the point. There was a row of cannons, or really cannon barrels, at the base of one of the bridge pylons that seemed totally incongruous with the park-like setting.

"Clear above," Jensen relayed. They had people up on the bridge, watching for snipers from above or anyone who might be approaching from below. It was both reassuring and freaky for Jared to know there were so many eyes focused on him and his surroundings.

"Now verify," Jensen said, his voice sounding on edge. Jared was surprised he'd managed to restrain himself this long, but he agreed that there was no point in going farther until both parties had confirmed who they were.

He turned around and came to a halt. Adil stopped a few paces away, the line of his shoulders tense and his hands loose and ready at his sides, almost a fighting stance. Jared noted it warily and said, "The weather is a lot nicer today than when we last met."

He gave a mental fist-pump of triumph at getting the exact wording right.

"Yes, I suppose it is," came the reply. Nothing about it having been raining, like he was supposed to say.

A chill ran down Jared's spine, and he took a step back. He could almost hear Jensen going tense through the earpiece. _Give him a second chance_ , he thought. Four years had passed, after all.

Fortunately, there was a second back-up phrase, although Remhani was the one who was supposed to say it. When he stayed silent, Jared's sense of wrongness started to ramp up, enhanced by the way the other man kept looking around. It wasn't so much watchfulness as if he was waiting for something, and that was something that no one watching from the bridge could possibly pick up on.

The back of Jared's neck was prickling, and he wouldn't be surprised if the hairs there were standing up. "I haven't been able to come back to Bali since we left," he said, the answer to the question that hadn't been asked.

When Adil's expression stayed blank, Jared took a step back. "You're not Adil Remhani," he accused. Jensen's snarled curse in his ear made him feel better, but only marginally.

"It doesn't matter," the other man replied.

Of all the possible responses Jared was expecting, that wasn't one of them. "What?" he asked, baffled.

They were a few yards away from a street, and out of the corner of his eye, Jared saw a dark vehicle pass by. When it came to a screeching halt, he turned to look and saw two people climbing out of a van and heading straight toward him.

Adrenaline took over, and between one heartbeat and the next, Jared turned tail and ran.


	8. Book 2 (Sydney), Chapter 2

"Goddamnit!" Jensen growled, seeing what was about to happen a split second too late to do anything about it.

He'd had to stay on the cove side of the bridge; with so few pedestrians around, Remhani would have been suspicious at the sight of anyone else besides Jared. Holding up the digital camera he was carrying, Jensen took a few shots of the underside of the bridge like he was a tourist trying to be artistic. 

It was a marvelous piece of engineering, but when he saw the groups of people walking through its understory to begin their climb up the long arch of the bridge, Jensen looked away. It wasn't that he was _afraid_ of heights, it was just that there was no reason to climb up there like that when you didn't have to. He'd taken up uncomfortably high positions himself a time or two, mostly as Dean Winchester, and he didn't think he'd be doing it for fun any time soon.

Before Jensen could think about it any more, Jared had started the recognition sequence. Then things took a turn for the worse really fast. As soon as Jared made his accusation, Jensen was on the move, snapping orders into his Bluetooth, moving quickly through the park until he had Jared's tall figure in sight.

He saw the van approaching a fraction of a second before Jared did, and he didn't have time to give a warning before Jared was taking off and running. Which was exactly the right thing to do. The problem was, he was running in the wrong direction.

"Toward me, damn it!" Jensen called as he broke into a run himself, dropping the camera on the grass. "Jay!"

"Too many people," came the gasped response. Instead of running toward where he knew Jensen was—and where the tourists were—Jared was heading inland along the north side of the bridge, parallel to the road where the van was.

The two men who had exited the van were in pursuit on foot, while the van made a squealing u-turn behind them. The apparently fake Remhani was racing toward the van, and Jensen cursed as he saw him climb in the back. "Has someone got that van?" he demanded of his unseen team members. 

"Watching it now," came a voice that he recognized as one of the junior local operatives. "We'll track it."

Jensen turned his attention toward Jared, who was running down the sidewalk full tilt. He was approaching a cross street that ran under the bridge, and then he turned down it. "Damn it," Jensen muttered and increased his pace. That was the direction Jared should have been heading all along, toward Jensen and away from the unknown pursuers. Now he was headed into The Rocks, the oldest part of Sydney, with a surprisingly large number of narrow and twisting streets despite being on a relatively small peninsula. That was good for losing a tail, but bad for catching up with Jared.

"Jen?" he heard Jared's voice, out of breath and frightened, and his heart clenched. 

"Keep going," he ordered. "I'm right behind those sons of bitches. Backup is on the next street."

He followed Jared's path with his eyes as he crossed under the bridge and took a sharp right turn. The van that was following continued in more of a straight line, and Jensen briefly grinned as he lengthened his stride. _Atta boy, Jay_.

When he reached the place where Jared had turned, Jensen found that it was a very narrow street, almost an alley, and it sloped upwards between three-story brick buildings that looked like they'd been there since the first Europeans settled these shores.

What he didn't see was Jared.

"Jay?" he called, aware that he was probably blasting Jared's eardrums but unable to care.

""m here," came the ragged reply. "Up the hill. There's an alleyway…between the buildings…on the left. I'll wait there."

"No!" Jensen returned, sprinting up the street. "The van went that way. Stay put!"

He realized suddenly that he didn't know which way the two men had gone who'd been between him and Jared. When he heard a, "Hey!" through Jared's earpiece that wasn't in Jared's voice, his stomach sank. "Jay?"

"Shit, they're right—"

There was a thud and then a clatter. Jensen pushed himself to run even faster, reaching for the handgun in his jacket, not caring if he freaked out the few tourists roaming the streets. He pounded up the side street, looking for the alley Jared had mentioned, skidding to a halt on the brick sidewalk when he found it.

The alley was almost narrow enough for his shoulders to brush the brick walls, and it was dark in the shadow of the bridge embankment. Gun at the ready, Jensen carefully stepped along, not daring to try and raise Jared on the comm despite not having heard anything from him after the ominous scuffling sounds.

About halfway down the passageway, a glint of metal caught his eye, and he looked down to see Jared's earpiece at the foot of the wall. "Fuck," he muttered as his heart sank, bending to pick it up and put it in his pocket.

The revving sound of an engine caught his ear, and he looked up. At the end of the passageway was a black van, the sound of the back door being shut echoing in the narrow streets.

_No, not again!_ It was exactly like Jared being hustled into the back of a van in Barcelona at gunpoint. Jensen had run away that time, headed in the opposite direction in what had seemed like a good idea but turned out to be disastrous when it was revealed to be Ravenswood at the controls. This time was totally different, and Jensen broke into a run, yelling and cursing as the van pulled away with a screech of rubber.

Jensen burst out onto the main street, bringing up his gun to aim at the fast-disappearing van. A shrill scream caught his attention, and he whirled to see a blonde woman pointing at him in fear.

"Jon, we have the van," Alex's voice came in his ear. "Get out of sight."

As much as he wanted to chase after the van on foot, Jensen knew that he was better off disappearing in case someone had called the cops on the crazy guy waving the gun. He ducked into the alley and went back the way he'd come, doubling up and down a few streets until he was sure he was safe. 

"Where is he, Alex?" Jensen demanded after way too many minutes of radio silence.

"We've almost got it—there, before it gets to Alfred Street," he heard Alex command someone else on his end. "Just a moment, Jon."

He stared at the brick buildings around him, chest and throat feeling raw from the frantic sprinting he'd done earlier, gut twisted in knots with fear that something had already happened to Jared. Had this been the Panther's doing after all? Had he somehow found out Jared was alive, found out the resemblance to Sam, and used it to lure him down there? 

Or was it someone who wanted Sam? Had Jared done too good a job selling his role, and now some unknown parties thought they had a man in their grasp who was actually dead?

Jensen didn't want to think about what would happen if they found out they didn't really have Sam Winchester.

He straightened abruptly as he heard noises at the other end of his comm unit—scuffling, shouting, the occasional bang or thump. Hands clenched into fists, he started walking in the direction where he knew they were, even if it was half a mile away. He had to be there when they got Jared back.

A moment later, Alex's voice came over the line. "Jon, I'm sorry." 

His heart skipped a beat and he came to a dead halt on the sidewalk. "What?" he asked hoarsely, a thousand horrible scenarios running through his head.

"He's not there. It's the same van that spooked Jay, but Remhani's not in the back, and neither is Jay. He's not here."

How could Jared have vanished into thin air? He'd gone down the alleyway. He'd been assaulted by someone who'd ripped out his earpiece. The van had pulled up and driven away. And somewhere during all of that, he'd been spirited somewhere else, right under Jensen's nose. 

He slumped back against the nearest wall, the adrenaline withdrawal and sudden, sharp fear making his hands tremble. "He's gone." Jensen's voice shook. "They took him, Alex. He's gone."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Awareness came back to Jared in a slow, confusing trickle of sensations. There was the sound of slowly dripping water somewhere on the edge of his hearing. Then he heard low voices and the scrape of footsteps. When Jared breathed in, the air felt heavy and damp, like the mustiness of a basement. It also smelled earthy, but in a sharp, clean way.

His eyelids felt too heavy to open, but he dimly realized he was sitting upright, his head hanging down against his chest. His neck was sore, like he'd been in that position for a long time. His head was throbbing, but given that he'd been knocked out God only knew how long ago, a headache wasn't surprising. As his muzzy brain tried to figure out how he could be sitting in a chair if he was unconscious, he felt something across his chest constricting his inhalations, and a tendril of fear started to worm its way up his spine.

Jared opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw were his hands, resting in his lap. A thick rope bound them together, wound tightly around his wrists. The sight made his heart skip a beat, and he gave an involuntary jerk. When he realized that the restraint around his chest was another rope tying him to the chair he was sitting in, he jerked his head upright and looked around, panic starting to trill through his veins.

From the small, high windows on the walls, he was definitely in a basement. The walls were sandstone, the floor packed earth. The room was pretty large, maybe the lower story of a house. The only light beyond the windows came from a bare bulb hanging over a table in the far corner. Two men were leaning over a series of papers spread out over the table, accounting for the murmur of voices that he'd heard.

The rest of the room was completely bare—no furniture, nothing. Wooden posts stretched up to the ceiling and wooden beams ran across it. Jared realized as he looked up that it was a surprisingly high ceiling for a basement. He doubted he could touch it if he was standing up, while he usually had to duck his head to move through a basement without braining himself.

His arms and legs were cramping up from being confined to the chair, and while the quick look at the windows had told him it was daytime outside, he had no idea if it was the same day he'd been taken or not. He had no idea where he was or how far away he'd been taken, or how whoever these people were had managed to spirit him away from under Jensen's nose.

"He's awake."

The voice came from a third person who Jared hadn't even noticed. There was a flight of stone steps that went up into darkness about fifteen feet away, and a woman was sitting on the third step from the bottom. She held a shotgun across her lap, angled in Jared's direction but not actually pointing at him. Jared realized her voice had the broad vowels of an Australian accent, and now he was really getting confused. Who were these people, and what did they want from him?

_No,_ , he corrected himself with a sinking stomach. _What do they want from Sam Winchester?_

Wouldn't that just be a kick in the pants, to be mistaken for Sam by the wrong kind of people? He wondered if anything like this had run through Jensen's head when he was making up worst-case scenarios to freak out over.

_Come on, Jensen. I know you're going to find me. Do it fast, okay?_

The two men at the table straightened up and exchanged a glance. Jared watched warily as one of them moved around the table and started coming closer. He was wearing a plaid flannel shirt and jeans, work boots that looked like they were as old as Jared, and his face was worn and lined like he was used to spending time in the sun. When he reached behind his back and withdrew a gleaming metal revolver, Jared's whole body tensed even though there was nowhere for him to go. 

"Winchester." The man moving across the room stood in front of him, hands at his sides, the gun tapping against one knee. "That right?"

Jared's mouth was completely dry, his throat almost sticking as he tried to swallow. "Who wants to know?"

"The bloke with the gun," came the sardonic response. 

From the closer angle, Jared could see that the guy was older than him, maybe close to forty. His eyes were hard, his posture speaking of that same constant readiness that Jared had seen in the video recordings of Sam. His hand was curled around the grip of the gun like it was part of his body, something he was so familiar with that handling it was an afterthought, and Jared swallowed.

He was in deep trouble here.

"What do you want?" Jared asked, lifting his chin slightly. _What would Sam do?_ he thought to himself. He thought of Alex's words, how Sam Winchester was always guarded, never giving anything of himself away. He tried to keep that same half-bored, half-defiant look that he'd seen on more than one recording of a briefing session when his doppelganger was being told to do something he didn't want to do.

"We have a few questions for you, that's all." The gun tapped against his knee again, and Jared realized that it was making a dull thunking sound. He looked down and saw with a shock that there was a flash of metal between the man's pant leg and his shoe. He had a prosthetic leg.

Jared dragged his eyes back up to meet his captor's before bending his arms up at the elbows, displaying his bound wrists. "You couldn't ask me in the park?" he asked sarcastically, raising his eyebrows.

"Too many people around," the man responded, raising his free hand to tap the side of his head, and Jared realized with a sickening fear that his earpiece was gone. There was no way for Jensen and his team to listen in on the conversation.

He also realized that his feet were cold, and when he wriggled his toes, he found out that his shoes were gone. Without the GPS device, there was no way for Ravenswood's people to track where Jared had gone.

Jared was completely on his own.

He swallowed. "What do you want?" he repeated, hardening his voice.

"We're lookin' for something," the woman on the steps said. "And last we heard, you had it."

Jared did not see any way this could go other than badly, considering that he wasn't likely to have the faintest idea of whatever it was they were talking about. "Is that so?" he asked, willing his voice to stay steady and mostly succeeding.

"Yeah, it is." The man with the gun replied.

There was silence for a moment except for that obnoxiously-dripping pipe. Jared knew it was a waiting game being played, and he also knew that he was going to lose. "What is it?" he finally asked. "What're you looking for that's so important you kidnapped me at gunpoint?"

The man still standing over the table smiled, and it was not a pleasant smile. "Boy, we're gonna do worse t'you than that unless you tell us what we want to know."

Jared grimaced. "I can't tell you if you don't ask."

"True." The man with the gun regarded him for a moment longer. "It's a real easy question, or at least it should be. Answer it, and we'll let you go."

Preparing to bullshit his way out of here, Jared replied, "Then fucking ask me already."

The reply was swift and, unfortunately, utterly meaningless to Jared. "All right, Winchester. Tell us where Samuel Colt's gun is."


	9. Book 2 (Sydney), Chapter 3

"Where the hell could he have gone?" Jensen demanded when he caught up with Alex and the rest of the Ravenswood team, scattered around a black van with its rear doors open and three men in handcuffs on the sidewalk. 

They were right behind the Museum of Contemporary Art, right off of Circular Quay, and Jensen was positively itching at the very public location. Anyone could be watching them right now, getting ready to interfere, and every minute Jared was being taken farther away.

"We'll find him, Jon." Alex's hand was warm on his shoulder, his voice fatherly and reassuring, and Jensen knew it for the empty platitude it was. "We're good at finding people, you know that, even the ones who don't want to be found. We're going to find him."

"Start by asking them," he snarled, turning to the three men in handcuffs.

"We will," Alex assured him. A police car was pulling up, lights flashing but siren off. "We'll figure this out, I promise you."

Jensen fought the twitchy urge to turn his back and run at the sight of the police car. The wanted man he had been was dead, but years of instinct were hard to fight. One of the Australians who was part of Ravenswood was already approaching the car with some kind of identification card in hand. With an apologetic pat on the arm, Alex moved off to join in on the conversation.

Eyeing the three handcuffed men darkly, Jensen weighed the merits of going over and demanding answers from them. If they weren't in such a public place, he could get what he needed to know out of them, given enough time and the right tools. Here with the warm November sun shining down on them and a thin but growing crowd of curious onlookers, there was precious little he could do. Not to mention the police who were starting to move towards the men from the van, taking away any chance Jensen had at interrogating them himself.

He whirled around and looked back the way he'd come, replaying every moment in his mind from the time he'd first seen the van until he'd dashed up to see it driving away. Jared had only been out of his sight for a couple of minutes, and only within that one narrow alley. Assuming he'd been in the right place, of course—there were a lot of narrow, twisting passageways in that neighborhood, and Jensen could have miscalculated.

Alex came up behind him as he was thinking, the scrape of a shoe against the pavement a deliberate warning that he was approaching. A corner of Jensen's mind appreciated the notice, given how tightly strung he was right now, but the rest of him was frantic for some answers. "What's going on?"

"They're taking them into custody for questioning," Alex said, nodding at the men being hustled into a police vehicle. "There's no evidence that they've done anything wrong, but apparently our say-so is enough to at least get them questioned."

"What about Jay?" Jensen demanded.

"Already working on it," Alex assured him. "We're pulling footage from all of the CCTVs in the area we can find. It used to be a questionable neighborhood, but they've been cleaning it up for the tourists, so there's a lot of cameras to pick from."

"The cameras aren't going to help. There's nowhere he could have gone," Jensen insisted. "He was right there in the alley, and then the van was there, and then he was _gone_. They must have switched him between vehicles. He could be anywhere by now—"

"Calm down," Alex snapped, taking a hold of both of his upper arms. "We can still track him on the GPS."

"If they haven't taken his shoes off," Jensen snapped as he shook him off. Then he forced himself to draw in a deep breath. As angry and afraid as he was right now, none of that would do him—or Jared—any good. "Right, okay. What can I do?" he asked once he had collected himself.

Alex gestured to a man about Jared's age, red-haired and freckled. "Take Tim with you. Go back over the path Jared took from the moment Adil made contact until that alleyway. Anything that was dropped, anything that might pose a clue, you take it and bring it back. Anything at all, Jensen." 

He heard the urgency in Alex's voice, and he realized that his old friend and mentor had to be feeling like shit right now. He was the one who had dragged Jared into this, had promised him it would be safe. Now Jared had been taken by persons unknown and vanished without a trace, and Alex knew full well it was on his head. 

The part that wasn't on Jensen's head, that was. No matter what Jared said, he should have refused to let him come. Even if this was all some kind of ridiculous misunderstanding and Jared showed up in the next five minutes no more than out of breath, it was so not worth it.

"We'll find him," Jensen said with forced confidence, meeting Alex's eyes. When he got a small nod in reply, he recognized the same insistent belief that they both needed to get through this.

"Come on," he said, turning to Tim, who was nervously looking back and forth between him and Alex like one of them was going to bite him. "There's a lot of ground to cover. Let's get started."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jared blinked up at the man looming over him, trying to ignore the gun in his hand. What the hell would Sam Winchester know about a gun made in the 1800s, assuming that was the Samuel Colt this guy was referring to? "I don't know what you're talking about," he tried.

The man with the gun snorted. "Like hell you don't, boy. You know exactly what that gun is and you know how important it is. We need it, and you're the last one we know of who had it."

Jared's mind was racing. He had no idea what these people were talking about, and he doubted Sam would have told them anything even if he did know. What he did know was that the longer he stalled, the more of an opportunity there was for Jensen and the others to find him, so that was what he had to do.

"I don't know where it is," he said with a sharp shake of his head.

"Look at that, we've already moved from not knowing what it is to remembering what it is but not where." The man with the gun stepped closer. "At this rate you'll be out of here in no time."

"Why should I tell you?" Jared asked, lifting his chin. "I don't know who you are. And if it's as valuable as you say it is, I'm not going to go around telling just anyone who asks."

"Smarter than he looks," the woman broke in, and Jared glared at her. To his surprise, she let out a bark of a laugh. "Honey, having your intelligence insulted is the least of your worries right now."

"It doesn't matter why we want it," the man at the table spoke up. Looking more closely, Jared thought he saw a family resemblance among the three of them. Siblings? Father and children? "What matters is that you tell us where it is."

"How did you find me?" Jared asked. "I don't suppose Sam Winchester is exactly in the phone book."

That got him a curious look, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to avoid wincing at his odd phrasing. _Give it all away, why don't you?_ he berated himself. If these people found out he _wasn't_ Sam, they had no reason to keep him around any longer.

"You're a hard man to find, it's true," the man with the gun said. "Dropped out of sight pretty successfully for a couple of years there."

_It's called being dead_ , Jared thought. "Why now?" he asked.

"We need that gun," the man standing over the table said. "We started looking around in the States, found out your daddy knew about it. Figured you knew about it, too. Heard that the last person who had it said you took it from him."

Jared shook his head. "That's not true." For all that he knew Sam Winchester to be dark and mysterious, stealing firearms didn't seem like his thing.

"Well then you borrowed it and forgot to put it back," the man sneered. He moved even closer, and Jared's gaze shifted warily to the gun in his hand. "Where'd you put it?"

"I don't know where it is," Jared repeated. 

"You don't misplace something like that Colt." The man lifted his hand with the gun, and before Jared could duck, it was striking his face. He could feel that the gunsight had broken the skin, a warm trickle starting down his cheek, and he swallowed hard, knowing this was probably just the start.

He thought bitterly that in all of the detailed—if rushed—preparation he'd done to play the part of Sam Winchester, no one had told him how to deal with the possibility of being tortured for information. Then his stomach turned over at the thought of that word— _tortured_ —and he felt nausea rising.

Jared thought darkly that at least he didn't have to worry about revealing any sensitive information, because he didn't know the answer to their question. What they were going to do once they found that out—and what was going to happen to him in the meantime—were questions he was terrified to find the answers to.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Two fruitless, wasted hours had gone by, and they were no closer to finding Jared than when they'd started. Ravenswood's people had pulled all of the surveillance footage they could find in the neighborhood, and they were able to trace the black van in an unbroken path from when Jensen had seen it leave the alley to when it had been apprehended a short distance away. No one had exited the vehicle at any point. Jared's shoes had been found two streets down from the alley where he'd disappeared, the GPS unit still attached.

Alex delivered the bad news through Jensen's earpiece, leaving him standing in the narrow street where he'd last seen Jared, the sour taste of fear growing stronger in his mouth with every passing minute. "Then he has to be here, Alex," he barked out, turning in a circle as if he could see through the walls of the buildings around him. "If they didn't take him away, then he has to be here. Let's start with the buildings around the alley and go from there."

"Jon, it's Alice," came a woman's voice in his ear. "I'm afraid it's not as simple as that."

Jensen put his hand over his eyes, pressing on his temples to try and ward off a headache. "Look, I know I can't just go breaking and entering into every building I see—"

"It's not that. The neighborhood that you're in is the oldest in Sydney. It's where all of the ships used to tie up and unload their goods. It's also where smugglers made off with some of those goods after they'd been unloaded."

The headache instantly intensified. "Tunnels. You're telling me there are tunnels."

"The place is riddled with them," she said, sounding apologetic.

"Damn it!" He pounded his open palm against the wall. A few steps away, Tim gave a start and briefly looked up before going back to his examination of the ground. "Don't suppose they're mapped or anything useful like that?"

"Some of them are." He heard rustling sounds at the other end. "We're pulling the information we have and we'll send it out as soon as we can."

"Thanks," Jensen said tightly. 

It wasn't ten minutes later before things got even worse. "Jon, we think we have something," Alex's voice came through his earpiece, and the wariness in his tone told Jensen he wasn't going to like it.

"What is it?" Jensen demanded, his nerves tightening.

"One of the CCTV cameras caught it, and after what Alice said about the tunnels…" Alex trailed off and sighed. "There was a Zodiac that docked on the far side of the park, across from where the van first pulled up. About fifteen minutes after Jay disappeared, three people emerged from a warehouse on the water's edge. It's hard to tell without enhancing the image, but one of the three was tall and looked like he was struggling against the others. They all got in the watercraft and took off across the harbor."

Jensen closed his eyes, images of Jared being forced down a dark tunnel and into the Zodiac at gunpoint flashing through his mind. "He could be anywhere by now," he muttered. "That was what, an hour ago? Two? They could have taken him anywhere along the waterfront, and there's a hell of a lot of waterfront here."

"And a lot of it has surveillance cameras that we have access to," Alex reminded him. "We're going to track the Zodiac's path and be ready to move as soon as we find where it landed. You with me?"

"Of course," Jensen returned. "Hey, Tim!" he shouted.

The redhead looked up from the doorway he was examining. "I think I found something," he said.

"Yeah, we got it," Jensen said, waving for him to come closer. "If they took him through there, they kept going out the other end. We've got to move."

_Hang on, Jared_ , he thought, breaking into a jog as he headed back under the Harbour Bridge and toward where the Zodiac had been waiting. _I'm coming._

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It hadn't taken Jared long to realize that his captors were serious—as if he had any doubts. As soon as it became obvious he wasn't going to simply answer their questions, the man who'd been standing in the far corner of the room cut him loose from the chair, while the other two kept their guns trained on him. Jared warily watched every move they made, knowing that there was nothing good about being released from the chair.

His legs were stiff and uncooperative when they first made him stand. As soon as his legs would bear his weight, they forced him over to a corner of the basement where part of the floor had been dug out lower, forming a shallow pit. "Hands over your head," the younger man ordered, motioning with his gun.

Jared lifted his bound hands over his head and looked up as the other man, the one with the prosthetic leg, grabbed the free end of the rope. When he threw it over the beam above Jared's head, Jared suddenly understood what was going on, and he started to lower his arms to pull the rope back down. 

"Don't move," the younger man barked, raising his pistol higher. 

Given that Jared was standing in a depression that was a couple of feet deep, that put the barrel of the gun right at eye level. He swallowed hard and went still, bracing himself for what he was sure was coming next.

As the woman came forward, shotgun unwaveringly pointed at Jared, the two men pulled on the rope. They hauled on it until Jared was stretched up on his toes, arms and shoulders strained with his full weight hanging off them. His fingers were brushing the beam overhead, but he couldn't get a grip on it. It was uncomfortable already, and he had no doubt that it would get worse the longer he hung here like a slab of meat in a butcher's shop, and _that_ was a metaphor he really didn't want to have in his head right now.

The younger man tied off the rope to a hook on the wall, leaving Jared half-dangling by his wrists. The rope was already cutting into the bottom part of his hands, and he strained to push himself up on his toes to relieve the pressure. That worked for a few minutes, until the muscles in his calves and thighs started to shake with the strain. When he let himself hang from his wrists instead, the pull on his arms and shoulders soon grew too be too much.

Jared was aware that his captors were letting him struggle, but he didn't acknowledge that they were all watching him. The longer this took, the longer he could get away without answering the question that he didn't know how to answer, the more time Jensen and the others had to find him. All he had to do was hold on.

But when the older man came forward and pulled an eight-inch hunting knife out of his belt, Jared couldn't help but shrink back. Or at least _try_ to shrink back; the way he was tied up, he couldn't move very far in any direction, and the depression in the floor was wide enough that he couldn't push off the sides with even one foot.

He didn't take his eyes off the man as he circled around, bizarrely grateful for the rope he was hanging from that let him turn in a circle. When the man grabbed his upper arm and jerked him to a halt, Jared still craned his head around until he couldn't see the knife anymore.

When a hand closed around the back of his collar, Jared couldn't help the whimper that slipped out.

"I don't think he likes you standing behind him with that knife, Paul." The younger man's watery blue eyes narrowed. "Makes him nervous."

Jared tried to keep a game face on, but the thought of the man behind him with that long blade while he hung there completely helpless was something out of his nightmares. He waited in awful silence for a moment, feeling cool air on the back of his neck, sure that at any moment he was going to feel the cold sting of the knife.

Then there was a ripping sound and a rush of coolness over his entire back. Jared involuntarily jerked forward, realizing a second later that his shirt was being cut off. He shivered, not so much from the cool air as from the even greater feeling of vulnerability, still horribly aware of the man with the knife somewhere behind him.

"Where's the Colt?" Paul suddenly asked, his voice nearly in Jared's ear.

Jared leaned forward as much as he could, aware that he was telegraphing his fear loud and clear but still desperate to get away. "I don't know," he insisted, unable to keep a tremor out of his voice. His arms were aching, and he tried to push up on his toes to relieve the strain.

When he felt the pinprick at the back of his neck, right at the top of his spine, he froze. "I don't know," he croaked out. He kept his gaze focused on the floor, willing himself to remember that it wasn't the Panther behind him, that this guy wasn't going to plunge a knife into his back when it was information he wanted out of him. Still, every muscle in Jared's body was tense, his heart pounding out of his chest.

The knife tip trailed down his spine even as he arched forward to try and avoid it. "Where's the Colt?" Paul demanded.

Jared clamped his jaw shut. His breaths were unsteady, his heart racing, and he tried to focus on breathing, the simple in and out something he could use to distract himself from the terror that was trying to steal his senses away.

"Well, now." Jared felt the knife pull away, and he tried to relax, but between his aching shoulders and his strained legs, it was impossible. "That would explain it," Paul went on. A second later, Jared felt rough fingers trailing along the line of the scar in his back, and he abruptly twisted away.

The sharp twinge on his left side was a reminder too late that he was flailing around in front of a man holding a knife. Suddenly frantic, Jared tried to twist around and see how bad he'd been cut, but rough hands forced him to hang in place.

"Oh, he doesn't like that at all," the woman said, eyeing him up and down with a gaze that was more calculating than anything else. It was enough to chill Jared to the bone. "Do you, Sam?"

Jared grimaced and looked away. He couldn't feel anything trickling down his side, so it must have only been a graze. That was something, at least.

Maybe it was time to start thinking of a Plan B. If Sam Winchester had known what they were talking about, if he'd really stolen a gun, where would he have hidden it? Clearly, somewhere thousands of miles away from here. If Jared told them a made-up location, how long would it take them to find out he'd been lying? A day? A couple of days? 

Long enough for Jensen to find him, at any rate.

_But what will they do when they find out you lied?_ he thought grimly. _When they find out you're not even Sam Winchester?_

Before Jared could come up with an answer, he felt the flat of the blade press over his scar, and his eyes slammed shut.

"Tell us where the gun is," Paul insisted. He pressed harder, and Jared could just feel the edge of the blade digging into his skin.

_Jensen, please_ , he thought desperately. _Please find me._


	10. Book 2 (Sydney), Chapter 4

It might have been only three hours, but it was three of the longest hours of Jensen's life.

By the time he got to the docks on the other side of the park, a Ravenswood agent was waiting with a boat, although there was nowhere for them to go. Jensen paced along the dock, looking for evidence of any sort that Jared had been brought this way, but he saw nothing. There was already a team combing through the warehouse, and as much as Jensen wanted to be doing something, he knew he'd only be in the way there. So he paced, Tim hanging nervously behind him, until the message came in over the comms that they'd found the Zodiac's destination.

They sped across the harbor, dodging pleasure craft and what seemed like dozens of green-and-yellow ferries of all sizes. They zipped through the shadow of the Harbour Bridge and then under the bridge itself, following the curve of the northern shoreline inward until they docked next to a small ferry at a tiny little terminal. 

There was a group of school kids clambering on the ferry, and Jensen groaned. "Alex, where are we going?" he muttered. In the small shelter on the wharf, he could see the bubble of a surveillance camera, no doubt the one from which they'd gotten their information.

"Just a minute," came the voice in his ear. "We saw them land, and there are still three people on board. One got off here, but another one boarded."

"Can you see Jay?" Jensen demanded. 

"He's in the bottom of the boat, as best we can tell. We're forwarding the video now—there, they're pulling away again. Farther to the east, toward the ocean."

"C'mon, let's go!" Jensen snapped at the young man driving their boat. The guy pulled away without complaint, skimming around the ferry so that the kids on board let out a few shrieks at how close they were.

There was no point in going fast, because until Alex's people found the next camera with a shot of the Zodiac, they might as well drive in circles. Any other time, Jensen would have been drinking in the view, the glass-and-steel skyline of Sydney spread out behind the pointed white shells of the Opera House. But not now, not when he felt every minute ticking down like a heartbeat, scared to death for what Jared might be going through, not letting himself think that it might already be too late.

"We've got it, Jon. Around the next point into Mosman Bay."

They rounded a rocky promontory and roared into the narrow bay. Steep hills rose up on either side of them, lined with huge houses and multi-story apartment buildings. There was a ferry dock on the right, then another on the left, but Alex directed them to keep going to almost the very head of the bay. There, a rowing club had its own set of docks, although from the size of the yachts, Jensen didn't think much rowing went on there.

"They have a closed-circuit system to watch over their watercraft," Alex explained. "We've got the Zodiac landing about ten minutes after the last stop, same length of time it took you to get there."

Jensen frowned at the white yachts bobbing on the water. "Why come here?"

Tim answered, "Maybe they have connections here? Could be a good place to transfer to another boat."

"Maybe." Jensen rubbed his hand over his mouth. "Alex, how sure are you that it was Jay who boarded the Zodiac? And are there tunnels from The Rocks to that warehouse?"

It was Alice's voice in reply. "We're positive about the tunnels. There's one that connects to an old tavern a few blocks from where you last saw Jay, all the way under the bridge."

"What about Jay?" he repeated brusquely.

"What's wrong, Jon?" Alex asked.

"This doesn't feel right. There's too many people around here, or at least there could be. If I was moving someone who didn't want to be moved, I wouldn't bring them there. Wouldn't have brought them to the first terminal, either, not one that's on a school route like that."

"Maybe they didn't know it was on a school route," Tim tried.

Jensen shook his head vehemently. "Whoever these guys are, they went to an unbelievable amount of trouble to get someone they thought was Sam Winchester here. They wouldn't mess up something like that, not when they're trying to get away without drawing attention." He stared out across the water for a moment. "Alex, can you send me the footage from that warehouse by the bridge?"

"Of course. There's no clear shot of his face, though."

"Doesn't matter." Jensen pulled his phone out of his pocket and waited impatiently until it beeped to signal a new message. He punched the button and watched the tiny image flicker across the screen.

Then he watched it again. And again.

Finally, he slumped back in his seat, sending the boat rocking. "It's not him, Alex. We've been on a fucking wild goose chase."

"How do you know?" Alex demanded.

"I know how Jay moves," Jensen replied. "I know how he holds his head, how he—" He broke off, remembering watching from the upper story of a building as Jared was shoved out of sight by the Panther at the point of a taser. "I even know how he moves when he's being fucking kidnapped, okay? It's not him."

There was silence for a moment. Then Alex let out a sigh. "Then where is he?"

Jensen bit back the sharp retort that he wanted to make. "I don't know," he said instead, his throat going tight.

"Um, I saw something back there," Tim said hesitantly. When Jensen whipped around to face him, he shrank back a little. "When we left The Rocks? There was this door that was boarded up in the alley where you last heard from him, but there were scuff marks in the dust, like someone had just passed through. Maybe the door wasn't really boarded up?"

Jensen closed his eyes and rubbed his hand over his face. If he hadn't been so goddamn blindly rushing ahead, if he hadn't blown off Tim's suggestion…there was no way it was the junior agent's fault, but Jensen still wanted to shove him right over the side of the boat for not being more assertive about what he had found. Instead, they'd been cruising all over Sydney Harbour when Jared had been right back where they started from.

"Take us back to The Rocks," he said to the guy running the boat. "Tim, you tell us exactly what you saw and where you saw it, so Alex can get some people working on it."

Tim nodded eagerly, and Jensen bit his lip hard as the boat went into a tight turn.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jared had no idea how much time had passed, only that every inch of his body was aching like it never had before. It hurt from the raw pain around his wrists where the rope was digging into the tender skin, to the small, stinging cuts across his back from Paul's work with the knife, to the dull ache of his legs and shoulders.

And that was before they brought out the taser.

When the younger man, named Mick, rummaged through a duffle bag underneath the table and pulled out the weapon, Jared recognized it instantly, remembered fear shivering down his spine. "No, please," he muttered, twisting helplessly in his bindings. "I don't know where your damn gun is. Please!"

"You were the last one who had it," Mick insisted. He came closer and looked at Jared more closely, grabbing his chin and turning his head from side to side. "At least, Sam Winchester was the last one who had it."

God, that would make things even worse. Whoever these people were, they'd probably kill him outright if they thought he wasn't the man they were looking for. Battered and sore, Jared drew on what felt like the last of his endurance and tried to put on the stoic face he associated with the videos of Sam. "Yeah, I had it," he agreed, the first time he had admitted to knowing what they were talking about. Mick relaxed the grip on his jaw, and Jared felt the first glimmerings of relief since this nightmare started. Maybe he could talk his way out of it after all.

"Where is it now?" Paul demanded from behind him.

"I don't know," Jared returned, leaning back to get out of Mick's grip. "I don't have it anymore."

"So what'd you do with it?" Paul's voice rose.

"I don't remember," Jared tried. "It was years ago, and I—"

"Bullshit." Mick snapped the taser up, Jared's eyes instantly drawn to it. "This isn't the kind of thing you lose track of, Winchester. You know where that gun is. Just tell us, and we'll let you go."

"I don't know where it is anymore." His voice was shaking again, his eyes glued to the bright orange of the taser as he tried to shrink back from it. "Please, you have to believe me."

"No, we don't."

When the electric shock flared through him a second later, it was as teeth-grittingly awful as he remembered. Jared gasped aloud, writhing as he hung from his wrists, wave after wave shattering through him. "Please!" he gasped. "Stop it!"

"Tell us where the Colt is," was all Mick said in response.

It went on and on, as long as the knife had, or maybe longer. Their eyes were on him all the while to see how he reacted and adjust their tactics accordingly. Jared was nearly sobbing, no more able to give them what they wanted than to explain why he couldn't. After a while, he lost whatever logic he had managed to marshal as a backup plan, focusing only on dredging up the strength to endure this until he was rescued.

"I think he's telling the truth," Paul finally said, backing off. "I don't think he knows where it is."

Jared gulped a breath in relief. Finally. 

"I think you're right," Mick replied from behind him. Jared felt the blunt tip of the taser dig into his lower back, and he couldn't hold back a whimper. "Problem is, we _know_ that Sam Winchester would know where the Colt is. So if you don't know…then you're not him. Which means we have a whole other set of questions to ask."

Jared shivered, unable to determine if this deduction on his captors' part was a good or a bad thing. 

When the taser flared to life a second later, his back arching against the horribly familiar pain, he had his answer.

"Who are you?" Mick demanded.

Jared barely heard him through the sensory overload coursing through him, the present-day pain from the electrical device mingling with the memory of being tazed by the Panther, the fear and helplessness he'd felt then combining with his current situation. All he could do was keep his lips pressed together, refusing to let out even a cry of pain lest it turn into something he couldn't afford to let out.

When Mick finally let up, Jared hung there, gasping for air. They let him rest for a moment before the voice was back in his ear. "Who are you? Why are you pretending to be Sam Winchester?"

"Not pretending," Jared managed, and when the taser came on again, this time he couldn't hold back the sharp cry of pain. It went on and on, brief pauses interspersed with longer periods so that he eventually couldn't tell if the device was on his skin or not; the memory of pain was there one way or another. 

"Please," he finally gasped out, dimly aware that there were tears running down his face. "Stop, please."

"Tell us who you are," the taller man insisted.

Bleak despair rushed over Jared. That was the one thing he couldn't do, not only for his own sake, but for Jensen's and for Megan's. "No," he replied through gritted teeth, bracing himself for another wave.

He wasn't disappointed. The only change was that instead of the pain centering on his lower back, it moved around, like Mick was moving the tazer across his skin to see where it hurt the worst. Through the haze of pain, Jared was dimly aware of the scar where Odilon had stabbed him and that it was odd that Mick hadn't put the device there yet—

Then he did, and it might have been psychological as much as physical, but the sudden, searing flash burned through Jared like the knife he'd taken in his back and like the dreams he'd had about it ever since, and it was far too much for him to take. 

When darkness rushed up at him like a tidal wave, Jared didn't hesitate before letting go.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It probably took less than ten minutes to cross back under the bridge to the dock from which they'd left, but it felt like an eternity. Jensen must have checked his weapon half a dozen times as the boat raced across the harbor. It was either that or yell at the man at the throttle to go faster when it was obvious from the ominous hum coming from the engine that they were already pushing it. They were cutting a straight line across the water, barely swerving for the odd ferry or sailboat, and Jensen found that he didn't even care if they accidentally swamped someone. They were on their way to Jared, and they'd wasted too much time already. 

When Alex told them through their comms that Tim was right—the supposedly boarded-up door in the alleyway was only boarded for show, and at least three people had passed through recently—Tim showed remarkable restraint in not breathing a word of "I told you so." The thunderous expression Jensen could feel on his face was surely the reason.

Finally, they were pulling up to the dock, and Jensen watched the distance narrow between the side of the boat and the worn wooden boards until he could leap over the gap. He pounded down the dock, hearing Tim close on his heels.

They raced through the park where Jared's meet had gone so disastrously wrong, down the same route of streets that Jensen had fruitlessly taken earlier. "This way," Tim panted, pulling ahead of Jensen and making Jensen double his efforts.

When they rounded the corner where Jensen had last seen Jared, there were police blocking off the alley entrance on both sides. Jensen was about to draw his gun and demand that they let him by when Alex called out from behind the barricade, "It's all right, officers. They're with us."

Jensen pushed past the police and up to Alex. "Is he in there?" he demanded. His breathing was coming too fast, and he forced himself to calm down before someone decided he needed to wait to catch his breath or something stupid like that.

"We're about to go in." Alex's expression was as tense as Jensen felt.

He gave a sharp nod and drew his gun. "Let's go."

As much as Jensen wanted to be in the lead, he let the police with their helmets and bulletproof vests go first. Inside, there was a steep flight of steps leading down, the dust showing the same recent disturbance as the stoop had. Their footsteps were nearly silent on the wooden boards, the tread worn low in the middle from years of use.

The stairs ended in a low tunnel, everyone ducking their heads as they followed it around to the left. They passed through a few doorways, probably going underneath a new building with each one. Jensen was starting to wonder how far they were going to go when there was the faint sound of voices ahead.

Instantly, the two officers in the lead started signaling to each other with their hands. Jensen waited with bated breath as they crept forward, placing their feet carefully on the sandstone floor.

Ahead, there was a set of steps leading up to the left. The voices were coming from there, and as their group got closer, Jensen heard the voices get louder and then stop. Then there was a scuffling sound, and he tensed and sprang forward at the same time the police did, knowing what it meant.

As he cleared the foot of the stairway, he saw two people racing up the stone steps, the first one pushing open a crash bar and sending daylight flooding into the dark tunnel. Jensen blinked to clear his vision, then flattened himself against the wall and let the officers behind him charge up the stairs behind the leaders. 

Neither of the two people on the stairs had been Jared. 

Jensen turned back to the tunnel and followed it for a dozen meters until it turned right and apparently ended. He felt for a door and was rewarded by his knuckles smacking into a doorknob. Saying a quick prayer in his head, he raised his gun and pushed the door wide open.

What he saw was something he would remember until the day he died.

It was a basement space, criss-crossed by wooden beams and with a deep depression in the far corner. Jared was hanging by his wrists from one of the beams, clothed in only jeans, his bare torso streaked with dirt and red marks of various shapes and sizes. His head was hanging down, but his chest was slowly rising and falling.

Even though every fiber of his body was straining toward Jared's limp figure, Jensen did a quick sweep of the room, taking in the papers spread out over the table and the bloodstained knife beside them that made his stomach churn. Only when he was confident that no one else was there did he holster his gun and rush forward, heart thumping. 

"Jay?" he called out, but there was no answer, even though he could see that Jared's eyes were open. As he got closer, Jensen's blood ran cold as he realized some of the red marks on his torso were from a taser. "Oh, Jay," he muttered. "Not again."

The rope tying Jared's wrists together was thrown over the beam and wound around a hook on the nearby wall. Jensen wanted to slice through it and free Jared right away, but from the dazed look on Jared's face and the way he was limply hanging there, he might well simply collapse to the ground. So Jensen moved forward, careful to stay in Jared's line of sight. "Jared," he called out after checking over his shoulder to make sure they were alone. "Can you hear me? It's me, babe. It's Jensen."

Within a few feet, he realized Jared's lips were moving. He was muttering something almost under his breath, and a shiver ran down Jensen's spine. They'd been trained at Ravenswood to have a mantra memorized in case they needed something to focus on under torture, a simple chant or phrase they could repeat to keep their mind somewhere else than in their bodies. Jensen had never had to use it, and he didn't think Sam had either, and there was no way Jared should be doing it now.

"You're safe, Jay," he murmured as he came up to him, looking up into the beloved face that was lined with tear tracks and marked with bruises, and Jensen was gladly going to kill the people who had done this with his own bare hands. "It's okay now. You can stop."

"Jared," he heard the other man mutter.

Jensen blinked. "Yeah, that's right. Are you with me, Jay?"

"Jared. Padalecki. Please. Stop, just stop." Jared licked his dry lips and muttered again. "I told you. It's Jared. Not Sam. Padalecki."

_Shit._ Jensen's blood ran cold as he realized what was going on. "Oh, no," he murmured. "Fuck, no."

He swallowed hard and briefly closed his eyes. They'd figured out he wasn't Sam, and they'd used everything at their disposal to force Jared to admit his real name. And somehow, whatever they'd done to him, it had been enough.

"Jay?" he said softly, reaching up to touch Jared's face. "Jay, can you hear me?"

Jared blinked. Slowly, his eyes lifted until they were locked on Jensen's. "Please," he said hoarsely. "Make it stop."

Jensen felt tears springing to his eyes, and he furiously blinked them back. "It's over, Jay, all right? It's all over. You're safe now. I'm here, and you're safe." Of course, that was a total lie if the men who'd got away had any intention of releasing Jared's real name, but for now, it was the truth.

"Jen?" Jared asked, weak and pleading.

"Yeah, it's me. Hey, I need to know you can stand up when I cut you loose. Okay? Think you can do that?"

Jared blinked. "Try."

"Okay, that's good." Jensen gave his cheek a pat and moved away, using the back of his hand to dash the tears out of his own eyes. Someone was going to pay for this, and pay good.

He sliced through the thick rope, putting more work into it as the last few fibers strained with all of Jared's weight on them. He held onto the rope as it broke, and while Jared didn't go crumpling to the ground, it was a near thing. Jared swayed on his feet, unable to use his still-bound hands for balance. Jensen let go of the rope and sprang back over to help him, wrapping an arm around his waist to steady him as he carefully brought Jared's hands down from over his head.

Jared groaned in pained protest, and Jensen knew his arm and shoulder muscles had to be killing him. "It's okay, Jay, I've got you," he soothed. "You're gonna be okay, you hear me?"

Jared slowly lifted his head. "M sorry," he croaked.

"There's nothing to be sorry about," Jensen said softly. "You're going to be fine."

Slowly, so slowly, Jared shook his head. "Can't," he breathed out.

Suddenly, nothing Jensen could do would hold Jared's weight up any longer, and he crashed to the ground, Jensen going down with him in a painful tangle of limbs. 

Jensen barely heard the shouts from the doorway, focusing only the way Jared's head was lolling back against the ground. "I’m so sorry, Jay," he whispered, shifting Jared's weight in his arms and feeling tears breaking through. "I'm so sorry."


	11. Book 2 (Sydney), Chapter 5

There was a faint, regular beep coming from overhead, or maybe from behind him. Jared strained to lift his head to see where it was coming from, but it felt like his head weighed a ton. Everything was dark, and as he started to come to and take in more sensations, everything hurt.

He grunted with effort, and even that hurt, like his throat was raw. The beeping had increased in tempo, and now he could hear other noises as well, like maybe someone calling his name.

It finally occurred to him that maybe if he opened his eyes, he could see what was going on. Struggling to make the simplest movement, he slowly, slowly cracked one eye open and then the other.

Jared saw white walls, a TV mounted high in one corner, and a pale green curtain around his bed. A hospital, then. He was familiar enough with those, but usually he was the one in the doctor's coat, not on the bed.

No, not a doctor, a nurse, he reminded himself automatically. He wasn't Dr. Padalecki anymore, he was—

Then it hit him, and he gasped. He'd told them who he was.

His shoulders and wrists suddenly started throbbing harder, like the memory of hanging from them made them hurt more actively. His back suddenly felt like it was on fire, and he tried to move to relieve the pressure, but his chest hurt too, and there was this thin line of raw pain running around his left side that had him gasping for air as he rolled onto it.

Dimly, he registered that the heart monitor was beeping louder. A second later, there were hands on his shoulders holding him down, and Jared grunted angrily and tried to shake them off, frightened at how weak and helpless he felt.

"Hey, hey, it's all right, Jay." 

It was Jensen's voice, low and soothing, but it didn't do a thing to calm Jared down. He thrashed harder, even if it wasn't doing anything but messing up the sheets. Why was Jensen holding him down? Why couldn't he move?

"Jen," he choked out. "Help, please, I…"

"You're all right, Jay. Lie still, okay?" The hands left his shoulders and moved to either side of his face, and then Jared had nowhere to look but at Jensen, looming over him with a terrible expression, fear and pain and anger all rolled into one.

Jared instantly felt tears springing to his own eyes. He'd completely and utterly failed, and the thought that both of their lives and their families' lives were now threatened because of his weakness was enough to make him want to curl up into a ball. If only he could move without it hurting so badly. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

Instantly, Jensen's expression softened, and his thumbs started stroking Jared's cheekbones. "There's nothing to be sorry about. It's my fault. We weren't prepared enough. We practically walked into it blind, and it blew up in our faces."

Jared shook his head as much as he could. "I wasn't strong enough," he croaked. "I'm sorry."

"Stop it." Jensen smoothed his hair off of his forehead. "You're so strong, Jay. You're here and you're alive, and that's…" He trailed off. "That's enough right now."

Jared let his head drop back against the pillow just to get Jensen's hands off of him. "D'you catch them?"

Jensen's jaw tightened. "One of them. But there must have been more."

"Three," Jared breathed out, watching Jensen's face darken. God, it was as bad as he'd feared. There were people running around who knew his real name and that he was alive, and all it would take was a little Googling on their part to find out who he was and that he was supposed to be dead. He'd done it himself, after all—it wasn't like Padalecki was a common name, no matter how you tried to spell it, and his supposed death in Washington, DC, was one of the first hits. "Jen, what are we going to do?" Jared could feel something clawing at his chest, panic rising up inside him, and there was nowhere he could go, nothing he could do to alleviate it. Maybe nothing _anyone_ could do to alleviate it, now that he'd blown what the Feds and Ravenswood had spent months protecting.

"We're going to be fine." Jensen put a hand on his shoulder again. "You're going to get better, and we're going to find the other two sons of bitches, and they're not going to hurt you again, you got that?"

The low, fierce tone of Jensen's voice was one Jared hadn't heard since he knew him as Dean Winchester, and it sent an unwelcome chill down his spine. "Too late," he muttered. "It's too late, Jen." 

The heart monitor was beeping faster, and before Jensen could reply, the curtain was being pulled aside by a woman in a white doctor's coat. "You need to leave," she said crisply to Jensen.

"No," Jared pleaded. Jensen was the one thing Jared could count on right now, even if he was wrong about things being okay. "Please, no."

"Doctor, I'll keep him quiet," Jensen tried, but she was putting a needle in the IV port and injecting something from a syringe.

"You need to keep calm," she said to Jared. "And you need to stay out of here if you're going to upset him," she directed at Jensen.

"No," Jared tried again, but his eyes were growing heavy, and so were his limbs and his head. "J'n," he slurred, wanting to tell Jensen not to leave him here alone, to get away and save himself before it got any worse, to fix everything that Jared had fucked up, but he was so tired…

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"I'm going to kill them, Alex," Jensen said, keeping his voice down so as not to wake Jared, the dark promise ringing in his words. "Every last fucking one of them." 

They were seated next to Jared's bed, Jensen in the chair he hadn't left since the doctors first let him back here. The only reason he'd let Jared out of his sight long enough to be treated was that Alex had assured him it was a completely secure facility. Jensen was surprised at himself for still trusting Alex after the clusterfuck he'd led them into, but the armed guard outside Jared's door made him feel marginally better. So did the gun Jensen carried all the way into Jared's room without any of the doctors or nurses batting an eye. This wasn't a regular hospital wing, that was for sure.

Alex's hand on his arm was probably meant to be comforting, but Jensen violently shrugged it off. Alex let out a sigh and said, "I know how you feel, but—"

"Do you?" Jensen snapped, looking up at him. "Do you know how I feel, sitting here next to him? It's my fault that he's here like this. They tortured him, Alex. They fucking _tortured_ him until he broke." Jensen's voice cracked, and his throat started to close up, but he plowed on out of sheer stubbornness. "No one should have to go through that. No one. Least of all him." His hand moved back and forth over Jared's forearm, feeling soft hairs beneath his palm before he reached the edge of the bandage wrapped around Jared's wrist. Jensen hoped to God that the angry red rope burns didn't leave scars, because the last thing Jared needed was a permanent reminder of what had happened.

Before Alex could reply, Jensen lowered his voice even more and went on, "And if you so much as _start_ to say that it was his decision to do this, that he made up his own mind to pretend to be Sam and brought this on himself, I swear to God, I will knock you out right here and now."

"Of course he didn't bring this on himself," Alex said firmly. "Don't be stupid." He waited until Jensen was glaring at him and then went on more softly, "But neither did you."

Jensen's mouth actually started to tremble, and he pressed his lips together, fighting to keep from crying like a little kid. "I shouldn't have let him come," he eventually ground out. "Neither should you."

"Maybe not," Alex replied gently. "But we didn't know this would happen. Hell, we still don't even know what did happen."

"The guy you picked up isn't talking yet?" Jensen asked. 

"We've only had him in custody a few hours," Alex replied. "And the men in the van were decoys, paid in cash by someone who said it was part of a game with some friends." 

Jensen gave him a hard, humorless grin. "Give me a few minutes with him."

"No." Alex held up one hand to forestall Jensen's protests. "We need this done right. Interrogation was never one of your strengths." 

"I think I could handle it now," Jensen nearly growled, his hand unconsciously tightening on Jared's arm. 

Jared made a quiet noise and shifted beneath Jensen's hand, and Jensen silently cursed at himself. He rubbed his hand back and forth, watching Jared's closed eyelids for any sign that he was waking. By the time Jared quieted again he realized that the motion had calmed him down somewhat, too.

Alex was watching him closely, a sad smile hovering at the corners of his mouth. "I know you want to protect him. And we don't know how bad it is yet, it's true. But Jay's not a fragile young man you can wrap up and protect from the world. You're mourning some kind of lost innocence for him, but the truth is, he lost that a long time ago."

"And that's because of me, too," Jensen retorted, his voice catching on the words. For all that he was thankful every day for having Jared in his life, for all that he was in love with him, even if he'd never dared admit it to himself until he'd held Jared's abused body in his arms in that basement, there were still more days than not when he'd gladly take it all back and never have taken Jared from the hotel in Berlin. Even if it meant, as Jared had later said, that he probably wouldn't have survived the night. All that Jared had already been through wasn't worth it, and now there was God only knew what else to deal with as well.

"He had every chance to leave you behind when neither of you knew who you were," Alex returned. "Hell, you even tried to force him to leave you in Amsterdam, didn't you? But he stuck with you. That was his choice. He could have walked away any number of times and sought help from the authorities instead of sticking with you."

"He should have," Jensen said bitterly, running his fingertips over the scar on the side of his head. "He should have left me bleeding by the river and never looked back."

"But he didn't," Alex said gently. "And that's not on your head, son. And neither is this."

Jensen only shook his head and looked away. What Alex was saying might sound logical, but he couldn't talk himself out of feeling responsible.

Jared grunted and shifted his head on the pillow. Jensen reached out and brushed the hair off his forehead, tracing his hairline down past the butterfly bandage on his bruised cheek. Pistol-whipping on top of the taser and the knife cuts and the rope burn, and Jensen really was going to kill someone for this as soon as he got the chance.

"Maybe you're right," he said hoarsely. "I don't think you want to let me near the guy who did this right now."

When he felt Alex squeeze his shoulder that time, he didn't shrug him off. Instead, he bowed his head and ran his fingers through Jared's hair, hoping he could provide even a small bit of comfort to Jared as he slept.

God knows he'd already done him enough harm.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Over twenty-four hours passed in the hospital before Jared was deemed well enough to talk about what had happened.

In his waking moments, he'd gotten across that there were two more people besides the one who had been captured, but the only other information he'd been able to provide was written on his body in ligature marks and taser burns. As much as Jared wanted to keep his eyes closed and hide from the fact that anything had happened, he knew Jensen must be going crazy wanting to get out there and hunt down the bastards.

The doctor, a blonde woman nearly as tall as Jensen, agreed to leave the room only if Jared's pulse and blood pressure could be monitored remotely in case he started to get upset. They agreed, and so it was only Alex and Jensen sitting on either side of the bed. They'd talked the local authorities into handing it up the ladder as an incident with international implications, which meant that Ravenswood was able to handle much of the legwork. Jared wasn't so naïve as to think he wasn't being recorded at least on audio if not video, but there was no visible sign of either, and for that he was grateful. It was going to be hard enough telling it to just two people.

The doctor checked his vitals one last time and then left with a warning look at Alex, who nodded as the door closed behind her. "She's serious," he said to Jared. "Any time you need to take a break, you let us know."

"Not sure there's all that much to say," Jared muttered. It was part of the reason he was dreading this: he'd failed so spectacularly and so quickly that the story wasn't going to take long to tell.

"Just take your time." Jensen was holding one of his hands, fingers intertwined with his. "We know what happened up until you started running, thanks to the audio."

Jared nodded. _Here we go._ "I realized it wasn't Remhani when he missed the second cue. And then, I don’t know, it was like he didn't even _care_ that he'd missed it. That sent up some kind of red flag for me, and I started to run."

"That was good, Jay." Jensen squeezed his hand. "Good trusting your instincts."

"Except not," he said bitterly. "I should have run to you. But it was the middle of the park and there were all of these people around, and I didn't know if they were going to start shooting or something, you know? I thought it would be better to get somewhere quieter." He drew a long breath. "So I headed up the street, and I turned down an alley that I thought would come out to the main street. Then you warned me about the van, but by then two guys had come out of this doorway. I swear they weren’t there when I turned into the alley."

"That's how we found you," Jensen said. "The door looked like it was boarded up, but it had been disturbed recently." He grimaced. "Which we didn't realize until much later."

"Yeah. Um, there were two of them, both with guns." Jared paused, remembering the awful helplessness of being trapped like that and knowing that even if Jensen was right behind him, it was already too late. "They, uh, they forced me past that door and shut it behind me. Then they pushed me against the wall and searched me. Then we heard running footsteps outside." He tightened his grip on Jensen's hand and went on, his voice shaking slightly, "One of 'em…put a gun to my head and said if I made a sound, he'd kill me."

"You did the right thing," Jensen said reassuringly, even though his eyes were going dark with anger. "Always do what the guy with the gun says if it keeps you alive."

"Yeah," Jared agreed. He suddenly remembered doing just that in a dark hallway in a Berlin hotel, and he had to look away from Jensen. Sometimes he still couldn't reconcile the man he cared about so much with the one who had held him at gunpoint and threatened his life.

Alex cleared his throat, probably aware of what Jared was thinking. "What did they look like, Jay?"

"Um. One was there later—he was an older guy, looked like he'd spent a lot of time outdoors. Sandy brown hair in a ponytail, about half grey. He had an Australian accent—well, they all did, I guess. The other guy was maybe in his thirties, pretty thin, almost as tall as me."

"Hair color?" Alex asked. "Eye color, any tattoos or anything?"

Jared shook his head, looking down at the blankets across his lap. "I wasn't really paying attention to that," he said quietly. The subtext was _I was too scared,_ and when he shot Alex a quick glance and got a sympathetic look in return, he knew he'd been understood. 

All Alex said, though, was "What happened next?"

Jared shrugged, then grimaced at the movement of his strained muscles. "I don't know. They knocked me out." There was a low grunt, almost a growl, from Jensen's direction. Jared steeled himself and went on, "I woke up and I was tied to a chair. In—I guess it was the same room where you found me. They, um, there were three of them. The young guy from before, and a woman, and an older guy who looked like they might have been related. Oh, and he had a prosthetic leg."

"That's pretty unusual," Jensen murmured with a hopeful look at Alex.

"His whole leg?" Alex asked.

"Um, I think so. Yeah, it was when he tapped his knee that I noticed it." Jared shivered, remembering the man stalking toward him with a gun in his hand.

"There must be a registry we can look through, right?" Jensen asked. "If this guy is from Australia?"

"We'll get on that," Alex promised him. It sounded like a command as much as a promise, and Jared winced as he remembered that the three of them in the room probably weren't the only ones hearing the conversation. "What happened when you woke up?"

"They thought I was Sam." Jared gave a smaller shrug. "Guess we did too good a job with that."

"Oh, Jay," Jensen sighed, reaching up with his free hand to brush the hair off Jared's forehead. Jared hadn't realized he was sweating, but Jensen's hand came away slick. "It's not your fault, all right?" 

"Doesn't matter," Jared said hoarsely. "I fucked up."

"Listen to me." Jensen's voice was almost harsh, and it got Jared's attention. "You did so much more than you ever should have had to. I saw what they did to you in there."

"No, you didn't." Jared held out his wrists, displaying the clean white bandages. "You saw the effects, but not what they did. It wasn't even that much." 

"Bullshit." Jensen glared at him. "I know how goddamn stubborn you are. I know how hard you can fight. I also know that torturing a man in a way he's been tortured before breaks him much faster."

Jared shivered at the look on Jensen's face and the suggestion that he knew something about either torturing or being tortured. Then the words sank in, and he shook his head. "I've never been—" He had to swallow hard before he could say the word—"tortured before."

The hard lines of Jensen's mouth eased, and his eyes went from cold to sad in a heartbeat. "Yeah, you have. I saw it. When Odilon got his hands on you in Washington. In that half-empty building when he knew I was coming for you. He hurt you for the sake of hurting you, Jay. That's what it means."

Jared had to look away. He'd never thought of it like that before. He wasn't sure what he thought of the notion, but it made him uncomfortable. "Yeah, but these guys weren't doing it for its own sake. They wanted something that Sam knew about."

"What did they want?" Alex asked.

"Some gun that they thought Sam had."

There was silence for a moment. Then Jensen sat back in his chair. "A gun? They did all this for a fucking gun?"

"What gun?" Alex asked, eyes narrowing.

"A Colt." Jared shook his head. "An original. That's all I know. They kept insisting that Sam was the last one to have it, that he knew where it was. When I wouldn't tell them, that's when they strung me up." He was breathing faster again, and he could feel his pulse pounding. Any minute now, the doctor was probably going to come in and shut this down, and there were important things he hadn't told them yet. "There was a woman," he rushed on. "The third one was a woman. She just guarded the door with a shotgun and threw in a comment once in while. It was the two guys who did the—the questioning."

Jensen let out a snort that showed what he thought of Jared's word choice. "You think you could tell someone what they looked like enough to draw them?"

He considered it. "I think so."

"I'll find someone to help you with that," Alex said, rising to his feet. He patted Jared's free hand. "That's good for now, son. We can talk about the rest when you're doing better."

"Okay." Jared tried not to sound pathetically grateful that he was done for now.

As soon as Alex was gone, Jensen leaned forward and dropped a soft, too-quick kiss on Jared's lips. "You're doing so good," he said, caressing Jared's cheek.

Jared turned away from the touch. "Not really," he mumbled. He wanted to kiss Jensen back so bad, wanted to bury himself in the way he felt and smelled and sounded, but every movement of his body hurt _somewhere_.

"What do you mean?" Jensen asked carefully.

He shook his head. "I don't want to talk about it."

There was silence. He heard Jensen shift closer, and suddenly there was warmth over his side and chest, Jensen carefully leaning over him without putting any weight on his healing body. "Then we won't," he promised, and Jared had to shut his eyes to keep back sudden tears of relief.

They were only like that for a few minutes when the door opened again. Alex stood there, his face more like a thundercloud than Jared had ever seen.

"What's wrong?" Jensen instantly asked, sitting up.

Alex shook his head, lips pressed tightly together. "I don't know how we're going to work this."

"Work _what_?" Jensen demanded.

"They want to meet." Alex gestured at Jared and then let his hand fall back to his side. "The two who got away. They contacted the office and said it would be in Jared's best interest to meet this afternoon."

"What?" Jensen growled. His hand tightened on Jared's to the point where it was painful, and Jared grunted. "Sorry," Jensen said as he let go.

"How'd they find Ravenswood?" Jared asked, wishing his voice didn't sound so small.

"However they found it in the first place when they faked Remhani's return," Alex replied. He shook his head. "They're even willing to come into the office to meet."

"That sounds like a _great_ idea," Jensen snarled. "As long as they don't expect to leave alive."

"There were three who got away," Jared reminded him. When Jensen whirled around, he counted off on his fingers, "The older guy, the woman, and the other one who grabbed me at first. Maybe they figure you won't do anything to them if there's someone outside who…knows." 

"He's probably right," Alex said reluctantly.

"I'm still going to be there." Jensen glared at Alex. "I don't care what you say about it."

"I'll be right there with you," Alex promised, his eyes steely and dark.

Jared bit his lip. He supposed it should make him feel better, having two strong defenders like this, but the thought of the people who had hurt him being in the same building, much less the same room, was creeping him out.

So he took a deep breath and put on the same face he had back in that basement, the confident face of Sam Winchester that he'd seen on so many of Ravenswood's video recordings. "Don’t let them get what they want."

"Don't worry," Jensen replied. "We won't."


	12. Book 2 (Sydney), Chapter 6

Jensen was glad he had arrived early for the meeting, because the thought of walking into a room where these assholes were already sitting took more guts than he thought he could dredge up. As it was, he was half wishing he'd let Alex chain his hands to the table in some discreet manner so he didn't leap up and strangle them as they walked into the room.

A man and a woman walked into the conference room, both a little older than Jensen, both looking rugged and worn, like they spent most of their lives outside. They were dressed in faded flannel shirts despite the summer weather, their jeans showing the signs of being patched in multiple places. Jensen could see red dust staining the cracks of their well-worn boots, and the man's baseball cap was worn and dirty. Whoever these people were, they didn't have a lot of money, or at least they didn't spend it on clothes. They were sizing up the room, noting the poorly-hidden surveillance cameras that Jensen knew weren't even recording. Alex had persuaded the head of the Sydney office of Ravenswood that this was too sensitive a topic to have a recording of, even in a secure facility. Apparently, they considered the surroundings acceptable, because they entered the room, the man shutting the door behind them.

_That's good, Jensen,_ he could almost hear Alex saying next to him. _Concentrate on what they look like so you aren't tempted to rip their throats out._

When Jensen cast a quick glance to the side, he saw Alex's hands pressed flat to the tabletop, as if he, too, was restraining himself from attacking their "guests," and it suddenly made Jensen feel a lot better. But then, he knew that Jared had that effect on people: despite his size, he'd brought out the protective instinct in Jensen, and apparently in Alex, too.

"Have a seat," Alex said, his voice sharp and cold.

The man gestured for the woman to go in front of him, and they both took seats across the conference table. Jensen watched them perch themselves on the edge of the luxurious executive-style chairs rather than sitting back in them. It was the same way he was seated, as if poised for flight at any moment.

"Why are you here?" Alex began. "We have one of your people in custody. You have to know that you're not going to walk out of here if you were behind the kidnapping and torture of one of ours."

"You'll change your mind on that one," the man replied in a broad Australian accent.

Jensen's hands gripped his thighs to keep himself still. "Who are you?" he growled.

The man nodded at him. "I'm Mick. This is Sue."

Jensen recognized them both from Jared's description as having been his captors, and he gritted his teeth. "They were there, Alex."

"That's right," Sue returned coolly, leaning forward so that her elbows were on the mahogany table. Her blue eyes pierced into him, clear and cold. "I was there with Jared Padalecki."

Jensen stiffened. Beside him, Alex went still. Only a small handful of people in the entire world were aware that Jared Padalecki hadn't died at Bethesda Naval Hospital after being stabbed by Raimundo Odilon. Now, even though Jared had told them that he'd given up his real name, the confirmation from the bastards across the table was like a slap in the face. 

"Before you go making any more threats about all of us not leaving this room, you should know something." Mick waited until they were both looking at him and then went on, "We have more friends than the one you've detained. And they know that a man named Jared Padalecki isn't as dead as everyone thinks he is. If they haven't heard back from us within a few hours, they're going to be sharing that information with everyone they know." He leaned forward slightly. "And we know a _lot_ of people."

"You son of a bitch," Jensen hissed, leaning forward over the table despite Alex's restraining hand on his arm. "What the fuck do you want?"

"Your boy did good, you know," Mick replied. "Real good. Wouldn't have thought someone who wasn't trained for it could have withstood what Paul threw at him." His tongue came out to lick his lips. "Wouldn't have thought a med student would have learned anything like that."

Jensen glared daggers at him. "What do you want?"

Mick looked back at him for a moment. Then he tapped his fingers on the table. Jensen noticed that the smallest finger was missing its tip, and there were other scars across the backs of his fingers and hands. "Where's Sam Winchester?"

He exchanged a quick look with Alex. There really wasn't much point in prevaricating at this point, and so Alex gave a slight nod and then said to Mick, "He's dead."

"Since when?" the other man returned sharply.

"A while ago," Jensen returned.

"And Jared?" Sue asked, leaning forward slightly. "It's sheer coincidence that he looks like Sam?" 

Jensen grimaced. God, he hated hearing them use Jared's name. "Yes."

"How well did you know Sam?" Mick asked, his eyes burning into Jensen's.

"That's none of your fucking business," Jensen retorted.

"Right now, everything about you and Sam Winchester is my fucking business," Mick returned smoothly. "I want something he had in his possession. You get it to me, and we'll all forget that we ever heard the name Jared Padalecki."

Jensen shook his head impatiently. "He's been dead for years. I don't—" He suddenly realized that he didn't even know where Sam's things had ended up. After Sam's death, he'd launched himself so wholeheartedly into playing the role of the assassin named Dean Winchester that he'd never gone through Sam's stuff. For all he knew, there was still an apartment in Alexandria with all of their possessions in it.

"We have Sam's belongings," Alex replied, casting a quick, reassuring glance at Jensen. "What is it you're looking for?"

"A gun," Sue replied. A fine tremor ran through her hands, and she flattened them against the table's surface. "He had a specific gun that we need."

"Sam had a lot of guns," Jensen retorted. "Or at least access to them."

"This would not have been from his work," Sue returned. A corner of her mouth quirked up wryly. "Believe me."

"It was a pistol made by the gunmaker Samuel Colt," Mick said. He started to reach for his shirt pocket, but at Jensen's tense motion, he held up his hands and moved more slowly. He drew out a folded piece of paper and carefully opened it out on the tabletop.

It was a pencil drawing of a gun. It was beautiful for something so lethal: long, elegant lines and decorative work that made it more than a weapon. Jensen studied it carefully and then sat back in his chair. "I've never seen it," he said dismissively. "Sam never had it."

"He was the last person we know of who had it," Mick said. "Maybe you didn't know about it, but he had it, all right." One finger tapped the drawing. "See these symbols on the stock? They're more than a little distinctive."

"Sam never used a Colt," Jensen retorted, folding his arms across his chest. "His brother had one, and Sam refused to use one because of that."

"His brother, huh?" Mick asked with raised eyebrows. He exchanged a look with Sue.

"Maybe he's the one who had it," Alex suggested.

Mick shook his head. "No. Sam Winchester had this gun, and you're going to find it for us."

Jensen snorted. "Why would we do that?"

Mick flattened his hands out on the tabletop, missing fingertip and all. "Because we've had enough time to do some digging. Padalecki's name is pretty unusual, and it struck us as extremely odd that he would be listed as dead. So we dug a little deeper. Found out who supposedly killed him. Found out he has a sister who's on her own. Found a second death at the same hospital within a few days at the hand of the same international criminal in an incident that never made it into the papers. I'm guessing that 'Dean Winchester' is the man I'm sitting across the table from, although I know he's not the original."

Anger and dread were forcing their way up, nearly choking Jensen. "What's your point?" he growled.

"If you don't find the Colt for us, we'll spread the word that Jared Padalecki isn't really dead. Now, we might not know someone like Raimundo Odilon directly, but we know people who know people. And we might not know your real name, but we know who Odilon thinks you are. And all of that work you've gone through to make up a new life for yourselves will go right out the window once he knows you're alive."

"You son of a bitch," Jensen hissed, rising from his chair and reaching across the table.

Alex was faster, dragging him back down into his seat but remaining standing. For all that he was calm on the exterior, Jensen had rarely seen him so angry. "You're blackmailing them?" he demanded.

"Technically, I think it would be considered extortion, but we rarely make fine distinctions like that," Mick replied. He grimaced. "We aren't doing this for fun, gentlemen. We need that gun, and you're the only hope we have of getting it. So we're not going to refrain from doing whatever it takes."

"Why?" Jensen demanded. "Why that gun? Who are you people?"

Sue spoke up. "Think of us as the border patrol. We keep people and things from getting into our land. We need certain resources to do it. That gun is one of them."

"That makes no sense," Jensen growled.

"All you need to know is what this gun looks like and where it was last known to be," Mick said more forcefully. "What we know is that a man named Daniel Elkins had it in his cabin in Colorado. The last time he saw it, Sam Winchester was asking to use it. Elkins said no. The next day, Winchester was gone and so was the gun."

Jensen frowned. "That's not Sam. He wouldn't steal something like that."

"Maybe you didn't know him as well as you think," Mick said with a raised eyebrow.

Jensen glared at him but stayed silent. He'd never seen that gun, of that he was sure. So how were they supposed to find this needle in a haystack?

"Keep in mind," Sue said, fixing each of them with a look in turn, "that if you have any ideas about making this problem we've presented you with go away…we aren't the only ones holding onto this information. If we were to disappear, so would the safeguards on that information being released."

Jensen didn't see fit to dignify that with a response. "How do we find you?"

"We'll call you every week," Sue said. "You have till December 20." The corner of her mouth quirked up. "Even gives you a few days to get your Christmas shopping done."

"I'm already going to kill you for what you did to him," Jensen said flatly. "Don't make it any worse."

"Give us what we want and you'll never hear from us again," Mick promised. He rose to his feet, Sue close behind. "Oh, and release our friend. He's not going to tell you anything you need."

Jensen clenched his hands into fists. "How about we keep him around to make sure you hold up your end?"

"Careful," Alex warned in a low tone.

Mick folded his arms over his chest. "How about if he's not back with us by tomorrow, unharmed, we're going to the newspapers? Or maybe the Internet; I figure that's faster at spreading the word nowadays."

"Tomorrow," Alex said. "Now get the hell out of here."

Mick tipped the brim of his cap. "Be seeing you."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jared had spent plenty of time being depressed after his witness protection relocation. He was more than familiar with the feeling of helplessness, of being trapped in a life that wasn't his, a feeling that came and went as quickly as a California rain shower. He'd learned to ride with it when it came and not bother trying to fight it off, since past experience told him it would pass soon.

Right now, he didn't feel like it was ever going to pass.

Physically, he was fine, or at least he would be. The cuts and burns were healing, and his shoulders and arms no longer ached if he took a deep breath. The doctors were releasing him tomorrow under the condition that he wait at least a week and return for a check-up before making the fourteen-hour flight back to the U.S. The plans he'd made about where to go with Jensen to play tourist in Sydney had gone right out the window; all Jared wanted to do was hide somewhere that no one could see what a miserable failure he was.

Oh, it wasn't like anyone was calling him that, even though he'd very clearly failed at keeping his mouth shut. Jensen had informed him about the extortion demands and the one-month deadline, and when Jared told him he should probably get going back home to start looking for this gun, Jensen had looked at him like he was crazy. "Not leaving you," he'd insisted, even if Jared had subsequently turned his face to the wall and pretended to fall asleep despite the weight of Jensen's stare heavy on his back.

Night had fallen, and Jensen was sitting with him once again, flipping through TV channels between some football-like game that Jared couldn't follow and some cop show that had aired back home six months ago. It was too early for Jared to claim that he needed to sleep, but he was going to go crazy soon if he didn't get Jensen out of the room. Jensen kept trying to start conversations about how Jared needed to talk to a counselor since he'd already almost agreed to it back home, and Jared was ready to pop him one.

A shout went up from the TV screen as one of the teams scored, and Jared flinched at the sudden noise. When Jensen put a comforting hand on his arm, he pulled away. "Can you just go?" he muttered.

There was a pause. Then Jensen clicked the TV off and put the remote on the bedside table. "No."

Jared huffed out a breath and started to turn over, but Jensen's hand closed around his bicep. He winced at the echo of pain it brought, but to his surprise, Jensen didn't let go. "What do you want?" 

"I want you to stop hiding from me and tell me what's wrong."

Staring determinedly at the now-blank TV screen, Jared muttered, "Take a wild fucking guess."

"Jay, come on." Jensen's grip loosened and turned into a caress. "You gotta talk about this some time."

"I already told you and Alex every last damn detail. I'm done."

"That's not what I mean. You gotta stop beating yourself up about this, man. Those bastards were smart, and they learned how to push your buttons. There's no shame in that."

_No, there's plenty of shame,_ Jared thought. It was shame at himself, combined with guilt for the danger he might have put his sister in because he was too weak. "Sam wouldn't have given in," he rasped out and it was a light bulb moment even as he said the words. 

"Jay." He heard Jensen sigh, felt his hand gently carding through his hair, but he refused to look at him. "Listen to me, okay?" He heard the scrape of the chair on the floor, and then he felt the warmth from Jensen's body as he leaned closer. Normally, it would have been like a magnet pulling him closer, but he couldn't give in. "You're right, you know," Jensen was saying. "You're not Sam Winchester."

Jared let out a soft snort. That much was painfully obvious.

"But I don't want you to be." Jensen's hand came to rest on the back of his head, his thumb stroking the nape of Jared's neck. "I don't want you to be anyone else but you." He paused to clear his throat, but his voice still sounded clogged as he went on, "I love you because you're _you_ , Jared. Goddamnit, I _love_ you."

Jared shut his eyes tight and pressed his lips together to keep a sound from coming out. Why did Jensen have to admit it now? After Jared had shown himself to be such a failure and completely worthless, how could he believe it? "You can't say that," he finally managed, hearing the broken sound of his own voice. "You can't mean it. Not when you don't know who I am."

"Of course I can," Jensen replied, his thumb never ceasing its soothing motion on the back of Jared's neck. His other hand came up to cover Jared's wrist where his arm rested listlessly over the blankets. "Of course I know who you are, Jay."

Shaking his head, Jared felt like a petulant child. "How? How can you, when I don't even know?" He felt so lost, like the strong man he had always thought he was had vanished into thin air. 

"How did you know who I was?" Jensen asked, and that got Jared turning to look at him. He was shocked to see Jensen's eyes slightly swollen, as if tears were threatening, and a lump started to rise in his own throat. "All that time, even when you had every reason to believe I wasn't someone worth knowing, much less saving, you never gave up on me. You knew who I was when I didn't even know myself. Maybe it's my turn to return the favor." He brought Jared's hand up to his mouth and brushed his lips over the back of it, avoiding where the IV was taped down. "I love you."

Jared had to close his eyes to keep back the tears. "You shouldn't." God, how he'd been wanting Jensen to say those words, had wanted to say them himself so many times in the past few months, and now it felt like it was too late.

"Shut the fuck up." The words were quiet, but they still had Jared's eyes flying open. He saw Jensen looking back at him sadly. "You know I'm never going to forgive myself for letting this happen to you."

"Wasn't your fault," Jared muttered. "I wanted to do it."

"I told you nothing was going to happen to you. That I was going to keep you safe." Jensen shook his head, his expression bleak. "Shouldn't have let you do it."

That got Jared's hackles up. "You can't control me," he warned. "Don't you _dare_ even try." He figured he didn't have to say the rest, that there was so little he could control about his life right now that he needed to hold on by his fingernails to what he _did_ have.

"It's not about that. This is my world, and I swore to myself I would keep you out of it. It's already cost you too much."

"And that was before I fucked it all up," Jared retorted.

"Would you stop already?" Jensen glared at him. "It's not. Your. Fault."

"I'm the one who told them my name." Jared shrugged, almost welcoming the stiffness in his shoulders as a reminder of the pain he'd suffered. "That's no one's fault but mine."

Jensen covered his hand with his mouth before slowly wiping his hand down his jaw. It was a gesture Jared had seen him use dozens of times when he was stalling for time or couldn't bring himself to say something that had to be said. Figuring he'd cut him off at the pass, Jared slid down in the bed and rolled onto his side. "I need to sleep," he said in a voice that would forestall any more conversation.

Part of him wanted Jensen to protest, to fight for him, but all he heard was a long sigh. Jared closed his eyes and willed Jensen to just leave him already.

When he felt the gentle touch carding through his hair, he deliberately twitched but didn't pull away, waiting to see what Jensen would do. 

When Jensen didn't stop, Jared didn't move any more, either into or away from the touch. He tried to think about anything other than where he was and why he was here, but the rhythmic motion of Jensen's hand soon overtook all of his other thoughts. He eventually fell asleep like that, no sound in the room but their quiet breaths and the soft whisper of Jensen's fingers in his hair.


	13. Book 3 (San Francisco), Chapter 1

"Jacob, can you tell me what you're thinking about?"

Jared looked away from the window where he'd been staring down at Sydney Harbour. It should have been an enjoyable view, considering he'd been looking forward to it ever since he knew he was coming here, but instead it reminded him of where things had gone so wrong. "Nothing, really."

"Hmm." The office chair creaked as Dr. Sara Anderson sat back in it, tapping her pencil against her greying hair. "What were you thinking about before you came here today? On your way up in the lift, maybe?"

"That I really don't want to be here," he blurted out.

"Here in Sydney, or here in my office?" she asked with raised eyebrows.

He sighed and slowly lowered himself onto the leather couch. Like that wasn't a total cliché in a psychologist's office. Nearly a week after his ordeal, he had lost most of the stiffness in his arms and shoulders, but he still moved carefully to avoid his clothing brushing against the still-healing marks from the knife and the taser. "Either. No offense, Dr. Anderson."

"Then why are you here?" Her petite, grandmotherly appearance softened the words as much as her tone of voice did. "And Sara is fine."

Jared restrained himself from rolling his eyes. "Because the doctor talked me into meeting with you until she agrees I can fly home."

"I see. And how did she talk you into it?"

"She made—" Jared caught himself before he said Jensen's name. "She made Jon, my boyfriend, get me to do it in exchange for him going back home."

"So you don't want to be here because he's back at home."

"Yes. No." He let out a short sigh. It was nice not to feel Jensen hovering over him every minute of the day in the hospital, which reminded Jared too much of the last time he'd been in a hospital bed, right before his life had been yanked out from under him. "It's not that. There's something important we need to be doing, but I'm stuck here until the doctor says so."

Sara leaned forward in her chair. "Jacob, I'm familiar with Ravenswood's need for tight security, and I have read the basics of what happened to you last week, but you _can_ consider me as covered by whatever confidentiality agreement you signed with them. They told you that, right?"

"No. I mean, yes, they did, but this is beyond that." Even though his identity had been compromised, Alex and Jensen had insisted that no one else, even within their own organization, know Jared's real name. There was too much uncertainty about how Jared's kidnappers had known to use Ravenswood in the first place, and even an affiliated psychiatrist was somewhat of a risk.

"You're living under an assumed name." At Jared's pointed look, she raised her hands in the air. "I don't know your real name is, and I don't want to know. But it is relevant to your situation, isn't it?"

He rubbed a hand over his face in a gesture that he realized reminded him of Jensen, and he felt a pang in his heart. Maybe he missed him after all. "Yeah, I guess it is."

"For how long?"

"Since February." Jared shook his head when he realized it had been nine months. "I still can't get used to it."

The scratch of Sara's pencil on the notepad filled the silence before she said, "It's hard to answer to someone else's name, I'm sure."

"Yeah. And—it's temporary, or at least I hope it is, so I don't want to get too used to it, you know?"

Her brown eyes flickered up at him over the tops of her glasses and then back to the page. "What else has changed for you?"

Jared let out a snort. "Everything. Different job, different house. My sis—my family has to think that I'm dead, my friends don't know any different. And J—Jon's living with me, which is great, don't get me wrong, but it took a while to get used to having someone around all the time."

"Did you know him from before?"

"No." Jared appreciated how she phrased the question. "We met—well, at the start of the whole thing that got us put into protection." 

"I see." She wrote some more, and then looked over her glasses with a suddenly-piercing stare. "So he's to blame for your life being turned upside-down."

"No!" It was the same automatic refusal he gave every time Jensen brought it up. He wasn't going to place the blame on Jensen even if Jensen seemed to want him to. 

"All right." Her tone conveyed enough skepticism to make a point, but she went on, "But he is the only person you know from before you were put into protection."

"Yeah." Jared shrugged. "He's—it's kinda weird, considering how we met, but he's pretty much everything to me."

Sara put down her pencil and looked across the desk at him. "Jacob, when we rely on someone that intensely, we tend to reject any suggestion that they might be anything other than perfect. It's an understandable defense mechanism, but it can make it difficult to figure out where our emotions really lie."

He set his jaw. "I never said he was perfect."

"I understand that. But the quick response you gave when I asked if he was to blame for your current situation suggests to me that you didn't think it through before you spoke."

"I have thought it through plenty, believe me." He shot a glare at her.

"I see. So it's come up between the two of you before?"

"He thinks that it's all his fault," Jared explained. "That none of this would have ever happened to me if he hadn't dragged me into it in the first place."

"What were you doing when you met him?" Sara asked. She instantly waved her hand. "I don't mean at the moment you met him, but what were you doing before then? Had you ever heard of Ravenswood?"

Jared snorted. "Hardly. I was finishing med school, a joint M.D./Ph.D. program, looking for a place to do a postdoc."

"And what kind of work do you do now, back at home?"

He bit his tongue to keep from retorting that she should just read his file. "I'm a doctor in a small clinic." At her continued questions, he told her more about Morro Bay and about what his daily routine was like: his run with the dog, the co-worker he was warming up to, seeing Jensen at the end of every day. He briefly wondered what was going on with the clinic and Jensen's job; Alex had said they'd taken care of it, but it bothered him to think of the people who relied on them being let down so abruptly.

Sara was scribbling on her notepad all the while. "Is that the kind of work you expected to do after med school?"

"Well, no, I was gonna do research. That is, assuming someone wanted me," Jared said, pushing away the memory of the offer to interview at Harvard that had come seconds before he stepped into a backstage hallway and a green-eyed man put a gun to his head. He cleared his throat. "But I'm still a doctor. I'm still taking care of people, and that's the most important thing, right?"

"Is it?" Sara asked, eyebrows raised.

Jared threw up his hands. "No? Yes? I don't know what you want me to say."

"What you really think," she replied. "Not what you think you're supposed to say."

He slumped back against the couch. "I never really thought about it," he lied. Truthfully, every time he saw the latest issue of one of the few medical journals the clinic subscribed to, he felt a pang of envy for the people who were getting to do the kind of work that he'd planned on doing. Not that he didn't think his work was important, it was just… _smaller_ than what he had expected to be doing with his medical degree.

When he looked up, Sara had folded her hands together and was regarding him seriously. "When you go back home, you need to continue to talk to someone," she said. "Maybe a psychologist, maybe a therapist of another type, I don't know. I do know that you have some issues you were not dealing with before you arrived here in Australia, and if you continue to ignore them, you will not be able to appropriately face what happened to you here."

"I'm fine." Jared picked at the outside seam of his jeans.

He gave her credit for not rolling her eyes, even though she looked like she wanted to. "Do you want my off-the-cuff professional opinion?"

"Go ahead," he muttered.

"Very well." Sara looked down over her notes and then back at him. "I think you haven't felt like you're in control of your life for some time now. Not that I can blame you," she added with a tilt of her head. "But you've been trying hard to control the things that you can. Your body, for one. Exercising regularly, taking care of yourself."

He shrugged. "I've always been like that."

"And yet a few days ago, you were unable to keep even that amount of control for yourself." Jared's head whipped up, and she went on in a gentler tone, "Someone was hurting you, Jacob, using your own body and mind against you to try and get information, and there wasn't anything you could do about it."

"I could have been stronger." Jared stared down at the floor, trying not to remember the knife pressing against the scar on his back, and _damn_ her for bringing it up and seeing right through him to uncover something he hadn't even realized about himself.

"No, you couldn’t have," she said even more gently, waiting until he was looking up at her again. "In this job, I know more than anyone should about what human beings can do to each other. There is _always_ a point at which they cannot take any more, no matter who they are or how well-prepared they think they are."

He nodded. "I get that, I do. But…it happened so fast. I gave in so fast. If I'd been able to hold out a little longer, Je—Jon would have found me."

"So it's his fault for not getting there in time?"

"No!" Jared glared at her.

"Because from what I read of the debriefing report, he made a wrong turn or two before he found you," she pressed. "He could have been there much sooner if he'd done things right."

"He was doing the best he could," Jared retorted, leaning forward in his seat. "It's not his fault."

In reply, Sara merely raised her eyebrows. 

It took a moment for her meaning to sink in, but Jared let out a huff. "It's not the same."

"Hmm." She wrote something else down on her pad. "Our hour is almost up, but I believe we'll be meeting at least once more before you go home. I want you to think about what you just said and see if you can come up with a _real_ reason why it's not the same." 

Jared bit his tongue to keep from a smart-aleck reply, instead nodding in grudging agreement before rising to shake her hand and make his way out. 

He was more than ready to go home—whatever that meant—without another visit here. He didn't need someone trying to tell him what was going on in his own head, especially not if they wanted him to blame Jensen for everything that had happened to him. He could straighten things out on his own.

Besides, for the next month, they both had something much more important to worry about. 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 

"Alex, I'm positive he didn't have it." Jensen stared out the SUV's window at the U.S. Customs building, willing Jared to appear. His flight from Sydney had landed half an hour ago, and since he was on one of Ravenswood's private jets this time instead of flying commercial, he shouldn't have had to wait in a long line or deal with the usual maze of jetways and hallways from the plane to Immigration and Customs.

"His belongings haven't even arrived from storage for you to look through yet," Alex chided him. "Not that any of our people have been able to find a reference anywhere to a gun like the one Mick described, not in any firearms registry here or abroad. And you've told me a number of times that you don't remember everything anyway."

Jensen absently reached up to rub at the groove over his right ear. "I remember him telling me he would never carry a Colt. We were in DC, going through the arsenal at headquarters before we went to London, and he told me what to watch for, how a Browning maybe wasn't a good idea but a Beretta was something he knew." He shook his head, briefly remembering how that knowledge had flashed into his head in Washington in time to save his own life but not to do more than give Odilon a glancing shot. "And he told me he would never use a Colt because it reminded him too much of his brother."

"The one who looked like you?" Alex asked.

Jensen raised an eyebrow. "Unless there was another one I didn't know about."

"No, no," Alex replied. "We might not have known everything about Sam Winchester, but we knew who his family had been."

"I was surprised at how thin the file you gave to Jay was," Jensen admitted. "Would have thought you'd dig up more on your own employees."

Alex let out a sigh and tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. "It was a condition of his employment that we not look into his past."

Jensen sat up straighter in his seat. "I never knew that," he said slowly.

"No reason you would have," Alex shrugged. "He wanted to keep his secrets, and we wanted his skills, so we asked no questions and he told no lies."

"That you know of," Jensen muttered under his breath. He rubbed a hand over his jaw. "So he really could have been doing anything before he came to Monterey." He vaguely remembered an ongoing joke with Sam, coming up with more and more preposterous stories about why he didn't want to talk about his life before college, from Witness Protection to being a pyromaniac foster child to a precocious teen secret agent. Sam had never told him—at least not that Jensen could remember.

"There was no criminal record, at least not under that name." At Jensen's look, Alex shrugged again. "We did at least check _that_ out."

"Figures." Jensen drummed his fingers against his thigh. "Fuck, how long does it take for someone with one bag to go through?" It was bad enough that he wasn't there to watch over Jared during his trip—he was really starting to regret Jared's insistence that he come back early and start looking for the Colt—but this was taking forever.

"Conklin." Alex lifted one finger to his earpiece. "Understood." He looked at Jensen. "That was Terry, Jay's escort home. He's freshening up—they should be out in less than five minutes."

Suddenly, Jensen's impatience turned to nervousness. He'd only talked with Jared a couple of times in the six days they'd been apart, wanting to give Jared the time he'd said he needed to sort things out. Even before then, they hadn't had much of a conversation after his own blurted declaration of love. The irrational fear that Jared had decided he wasn't in this with Jensen anymore, even after Jensen admitting how much he felt for him, was churning in Jensen's gut like nausea.

He felt Alex's hand on his arm, and he flinched. "Jensen," Alex said softly.

He looked down to where his hands were clenched in fists on his thighs. Alex was usually so precise about keeping cover, even when there were no possible eavesdroppers, that it was a jolt to hear his own name being spoken. "Maybe I should go out and get ready to meet him," Jensen said, clearing his throat when his voice sounded clogged.

"I'm sure he'll like that," Alex assured him.

Jensen gave a sharp nod and opened the car door, determined to get this over with. 

There was no waiting area with rows of chairs and vending machines like in the main terminals. There were two guys in dark suits with placards announcing the name of the person they were waiting for, and there was Jensen. The three of them were facing a mint green wall with a closed door and a security guard next to it.

The door opened, and a tall, elegantly-dressed woman in her forties stepped out. She gave a small nod of acknowledgment to one of the men with a placard as she sailed past on her totteringly-high heels, eyes shielded by huge sunglasses. The man trailed along in her wake next to a skycap pushing a cart piled high with expensive luggage, and Jensen wondered briefly if her plane had landed in San Francisco instead of Los Angeles by mistake.

When he turned back, the door had opened again, and Jared was coming out, tugging a single roll-aboard behind him. There was a shorter man only a step behind Jared, his hand to his ear, no doubt Terry and no doubt conversing with Conklin. But Jensen only had eyes for Jared.

Jared's gaze was sweeping the room, and Jensen saw the instant that it lit on him. There was a flash of relief, fierce and quick, fading into the tiredness that was practically hanging over him, and Jensen was grateful down to his toes for what that unguarded reaction told him. 

He stood still as Jared came right up to him, Terry hanging back a step. "Hey," Jared said quietly, fingers flexing around the handle of his suitcase. 

"Hey," Jensen responded, his voice more gravelly than he would have expected. He looked Jared over from head to foot, not trying to hide it. Jared's long-sleeved plaid shirt and jeans didn't give away much in terms of the marks that might still be on his skin, but he'd been moving easily enough with the bag, even after sitting on a plane for fourteen hours, and Jensen relaxed a fraction. At least physically, he looked okay. "How're you feeling?"

"Fine. I slept a lot of the way. It was even nicer than business class." Jared cleared his throat and took a step closer. "Not that it wasn't, you know, missing some of the amenities from the flight out."

Jensen looked up at him, and even if he couldn't read everything in Jared's eyes, there was enough familiarity and warmth there, tempered with the same uncertainty that Jensen was feeling, that his nerves subsided. "God, it's good to see you," he murmured, leaning forward and wrapping Jared up in a tight embrace. 

Jared stiffened for a moment, and Jensen's heart sank at the reaction before he remembered Jared's dislike of public affection. But as Jensen was starting to pull back, he felt Jared's arms come around him. "Yeah, you too," Jared whispered back, and Jensen closed his eyes to breathe him in.

As much as he wanted to wrap himself around Jared and never let him go, Jensen was also aware of their small audience and that he'd much rather be alone with Jared. So he patted Jared's back and released him. "Um, Alex is right outside, so."

"Oh, okay." Jared looked hesitant for a moment, eyes searching Jensen's. "Have you found anything yet?"

Jensen shook his head mutely. Jared had to know that they would have contacted him in flight if they had located the Colt, but he could understand the need to ask.

Jared grimaced. "There's only three weeks left."

"I know." Jensen put a hand on his arm. "We're gonna find it, Jay."

Swallowing hard, Jared said, "Then we better get going."

"Yeah." 

They walked to the car in silence, aware of the lack of privacy for talking about either personal matters or professional ones. They kept stealing glances at each other, though, and despite the cloud hanging over them, Jensen couldn't help but feel a little better with each look. By the time they both climbed into the back seats of the big black SUV, Jared clapping Alex on the shoulder and getting a warm smile in reply, the nerves in Jensen's stomach had settled down almost entirely.

They pulled away from the curb, and Jared slowly reached out into the space between their seats with a sideways glance at Jensen. Casting a quick look at Alex in the rearview mirror and seeing that he was busy changing lanes, Jensen slid his hand into Jared's, fingers intertwining and holding tight.


	14. Book 3 (San Francisco), Chapter 2

"This is all there is?"

Jared was looking at three banker's boxes sitting on a table in a nondescript conference room in Ravenswood's San Francisco office. It was hard to believe that one man's personal possessions could take up so little space, that this was all of Sam Winchester that was left in the world.

Then again, he reminded himself, his own belongings amounted to even less at the moment, since everything from his former life was boxed up somewhere in Texas with his sister, hoping he'd be able to reclaim it someday. He'd acquired very little in the last nine months that he would want to keep—maybe the photo album of him and Jensen, maybe some of the books he'd gotten—but Jared had the feeling that were he able to go back to his former life, he'd want as little as possible to remind him of the current one.

"Yeah, he, uh, he traveled pretty light." Jensen's hands were resting on the lid of the first box. "It had something to do with how he grew up, moving around a lot."

"Was his dad in the military?" Jared asked. 

"No," Jensen shook his head. "He never really said, but it wasn't that."

"Huh." It was strange to be able to ask Jensen about Sam and actually get responses now. He remembered a bedroom in Germany, asking a man with no memory and fresh bullet wounds why he kept calling Sam's name and getting snapped at in response. Even as he'd poked at Jensen afterwards to see if anything sparked a remembrance, he'd rarely pushed on Sam once Jensen had remembered the man was dead. It was odd to think that now he could get answers to his questions.

Or at least some of them—between Jensen's faulty memory and Sam's apparently secretive nature, maybe Jared wouldn't be able to learn any more than he had from the thin file Alex had given him.

Jensen hadn't moved, hands still on the lid of the box. "Do you want to wait a bit?" Jared asked, even though that was the last thing he wanted to do, given the urgency of their search.

Jensen shook himself. "No, we need to do this." He flicked open the blade on a small knife that Jared hadn't even seen him carrying and slit open the tape on the box. With a deep breath, he opened the lid and set it on the pressed-wood tabletop.

Inside of the box was clothing: plaid flannel shirts, jeans, a dark suit, white dress shirts, and a couple of basic ties. Jensen took each item out of the box carefully, unfolding it and turning the pockets inside out before refolding it and almost reverently setting it aside. Jared figured that Alex would have his people go through everything in even more detail, looking not for a gun but a note, a scrap of paper, anything that might be a clue, but Alex had agreed that Jensen should have first crack at finding anything related to this Colt.

That was, if Mick and Sue were right, and Sam had been the last person to have this mythical gun.

"How're you holding up?" Jared asked softly. 

"Fine," Jensen said quickly. He drew in a deep breath that had only a slight quaver in the middle. "It's a little weird, you know?"

"I can imagine." On the one hand, Jared felt completely useless standing there and watching Jensen go through his former lover's effects. But on the other hand, Jensen had asked him to be there, and Jared was determined to be supportive. The psychologist's suggestion that he should consider placing some blame on Jensen still stung, and he briefly put a hand on Jensen's lower back before removing it again.

"I always told him he needed more clothes, that there was room in the closet and he didn't have to wash the same shirts every week, but he never listened." Jensen patted one of the flannel shirts absently, the corner of his mouth curving up. "Or he'd say there were other things we could do that would use fewer clothes."

Jared felt a pang of jealousy, but he ruthlessly quashed it. 

Jensen looked up as if he'd heard what Jared hadn't said, eyes going wide. "I'm sorry, Jay. God, this is awkward."

"No, it's okay." Jared forced out a half-laugh. "It's not like you're my first."

"Yeah, but…" Jensen trailed off, shaking his head. "This isn't what you're here for. I can reminisce some other time."

"Does it help you remember?" Jared asked, gesturing at the clothing. 

Jensen lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Nothing about a Colt, if that's what you're asking."

He nodded. "Can I—?" He asked, gesturing at the other two boxes.

Jensen nodded and handed him the knife.

Once he'd opened the boxes, heart pounding, Jared quickly realized there was no gun to be found. A gleam of metal had briefly caught his eye and gotten his hopes up, but when he reached for it, he sharply pulled his hand back. "Ow!"

Jensen was more cautious, reaching inside to pull out a wicked-looking blade, a curved piece that was all blade and no handle. "What the hell is this?"

"You don't remember it?" Jared inspected his finger, relieved to find he'd barely broken the skin.

Jensen slowly shook his head, turning the piece over. "It can't have been Ravenswood's, or they'd have taken it back." The overhead light glinted off the curve of the blade. "This isn't meant for anything but killing," he said in a low tone.

A shiver ran down Jared's spine. Maybe he should be glad that he wasn't that much like Sam Winchester after all. 

Jensen took a deep breath and put down the weapon. "Let's see what else is in here, hmm?" he asked in a more businesslike tone.

There was no gun, which meant Jared didn't care all that much about the rest. There were a few file folders, a laptop that Jensen set aside carefully for Ravenswood's forensic computing experts to look over, and a leather-bound journal whose pages had wavy edges as if they'd gotten wet.

Jensen slid off the band closing the journal, the leather stiff with age. "Huh," he said quietly. He paged through the journal, showing Jared that all of the pages were blurs of faded brown and blue, as if the ink had all been washed away. Some of the pages were torn on the edges or halfway through, as if they'd been ripped out.

"Was this Sam's journal?" Jared asked. It looked old, though that might have been from the apparent submersion it had suffered.

"I don't remember him ever writing in a journal." Jensen huffed out a breath. "Not that that means much." He put it on top of the laptop. "They have some pretty good people here; maybe they can reconstruct it somehow."

The next thing he picked up was a small pink rectangular card with a large, lower-case "t" printed on it. "Holy shit," Jensen breathed out, thumbing the card with something like reverence.

"What is it?" Jared peered over his shoulder.

"It's, um." Jensen rubbed his hand over his mouth. "Alex mentioned the job we had in Paris, you remember? I had no idea he would have kept this," he added under his breath.

"It's a subway ticket?" Jared asked.

"Yeah." Jensen drew in a breath. "We, uh, we knew something was going down. Like the bombing in London a few weeks earlier, but we didn't know who it was or what they looked like. Sam had been getting these bad headaches and nightmares that he wouldn't talk about, and both of us were pretty anxious and short-tempered. We were down in the metro, and how Sam knew it was the guy we were looking for, I never figured out. I mean, he had great instincts, but this was something else." Jensen shook his head. "He made a fucking beeline for this random guy on the platform. Turned out he had a backpack with enough C-4 to take out the station and half the building above it, and we got him before he had even thought about setting up the detonator."

"That's amazing," Jared said quietly, feeling like it was a ridiculous understatement.

"Just lucky, I guess," Jensen shrugged. "Or not, because neither of us had spotted his accomplice, and he shoved me onto the tracks as a train was coming. I rolled out of the way before I even realized that my leg was broken."

"Shit." Jared shivered. "That's why you were on crutches." He remembered the video he'd seen of Sam and Jensen, back in Ravenswood's office in Barcelona, and the thunderous yet protective look on Sam's face as Jensen hobbled along.

"Yeah. And that's when Sam went to Indonesia." Jensen rubbed a hand over his face. "I can't believe he kept this. What a fucked-up souvenir."

Silence fell, and Jared looked at the contents of the boxes strewn over the table. No gun, nothing that looked like it could lead them any closer to finding one, and the nervous fear he'd been able to squash down for the last few hours rose up once more, clawing at his gut. "Why don't I take those to Alex?" he said, gesturing at the laptop and the journal. "You can have some time here if you want."

Jensen was still rubbing the metro ticket between his fingers. "Yeah, that'd be good," he said almost absently. "Thanks, Jay."

Jared gave a curt nod and scooped up the laptop and journal. He gave Jensen a brief pat on the back, which he hardly seemed to notice, and headed for the door.

As he'd expected, Alex was outside in the hallway. Jared wouldn't be surprised if he'd been watching them through some kind of hidden camera. "There wasn't a gun, but these might have something," he said, holding out his armful.

Alex took the journal and paged through it as Jensen had. He gave a low whistle. "It's not going to be easy to get anything out of this."

"Yeah, well, it might be all we have," Jared retorted.

Alex looked up from under his brows. "I know that, Jacob."

The name still threw Jared, even after all these months, especially when he was with one of the few people who knew his real name. What made it worse was to think that if they didn't find this damn gun soon, his new identity and faked death would all have been for nothing.

"Yeah, I know," he said, rubbing his eyes. "I, um, I think maybe the jet lag's getting to me." He'd slept separately from Jensen last night, claiming that he didn't want to keep Jensen up if he couldn't sleep because of the time difference. Jensen had looked at him with a trace of reproach, but hadn't called him on it. In the end, Jared hadn't slept well at all, his mind racing and gut churning, though he didn't think it was jet lag.

"If you wanted to go back to your hotel and rest, I can let you know when we find something," Alex said.

Jared shook his head and squared his shoulders. "Actually, I was hoping I could ask a favor of you." 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jensen wasn't sure how long he stood there, lost in his memories. Paris had been one of the events that came back in full when his memory returned, but he hadn't really thought about it in detail, had merely catalogued it as complete in the rickety file cabinet of his memories and moved on. Now he was suddenly remembering piece after piece, from the desperate urgency driving them to not be too late this time, to wondering why Sam was heading for the guy on the edge of the platform, to the sharp pain in his leg and the screech of the train's brakes and Sam screaming his name loudly enough to echo through the station.

He looked down at the ticket clutched in his fingers. "Why did you keep this, Sam?" he muttered. 

Running his other hand over his face, Jensen sighed. As much as he appreciated Jared giving him a moment alone, this was not what he should be focusing on. There might be something else in these boxes that was the key to finding this gun, and any reminiscing or puzzling he wanted to do about Sam was going to have to wait. Jared needed him now.

He looked through the file folders more carefully, finding that they were almost like scrapbook pages, mostly consisting of news articles about places Jensen remembered visiting on jobs of various sorts. He was surprised Ravenswood hadn't taken these when they boxed up Sam's things. There were a few other random mementos that made Jensen smile a little fondly, or a little sadly, and a few things like the curved blade that puzzled him. Maybe there was more of his memory still missing than he had thought.

Alex was waiting for him out in the hallway, suit in its customary mid-afternoon crumple, and Jensen gestured inside the room. "Have at it."

"You don't want any of it?" Alex asked with a frown.

Jensen scrubbed his hand over his face. "Eventually, all of it, I guess. Just…I know your people have to look through it first."

"What's that?" Alex asked, nodding at his hand.

Jensen hadn't realized he was still holding the metro ticket, and he held it up. 

Alex's eyebrows shot up. "Odd choice for a souvenir."

"That's what I thought." Jensen shook his head and tucked the ticket away in his wallet. "Of all the things I would want a memento of, that day sure as hell isn't one of them."

"You remember it all?"

"Probably not word for word in the debriefings, but yeah, I remember it." He could still see the terror and relief in Sam's eyes when he crawled out from the overhang he'd rolled beneath as the train roared past. His brow furrowed. "Huh. That must be why that leg gets sore when I'm tired." Such a simple thing to know about himself, and he hadn't managed to make that connection before. God, his brain was still screwed up.

"We're sending the journal by overnight courier to Washington," Alex said. "Our main lab has better facilities for extracting any useful information from those pages. The laptop, we can look over here."

Jensen nodded. "Good," he said distantly. 

"How are you doing?" Alex asked, putting a fatherly hand on his shoulder.

"All right, I guess." Jensen let out a breath. "It's hard, seeing all that." He waved a hand at the boxes of Sam's belongings. "I mean, I lost him once, and I kinda went crazy over it, and then when I remembered everything, it hit me all over again. And now…" He trailed off and shook his head. "It's not fair to Jay, either, you know?"

Alex let out a sharp bark of a laugh. "Jon, if the world was fair…" He shook his head. "You and I would be very different people. So would Jay."

"Don't I know it." Jensen swallowed hard. "But he needs me right now. I'm all he's got, and he's all I've got, and here I am, wallowing over my old boyfriend's stuff."

"It's not that simple and you know it," Alex chastised. "And so does Jay. He understands that you need time to mourn Sam, even now. He doesn't begrudge you that."

"Well, he should." Jensen folded his arms over his chest. "If it gets in the way of what I need to be doing right now."

Alex tilted his head as if unwillingly conceding the point.

"So where is he, anyway?"

Alex's gaze flickered down the bland, beige-carpeted hallway and back. "He said he'd meet you back at the hotel."

Jensen's eyes narrowed. "That's not what I asked, Alex."

"Fine." Alex crossed his arms over his chest, further rumpling his suit. "That's what he asked me to tell you. Do you want me to break his confidence?"

Jensen rubbed his hand over his mouth and ignored the beginnings of a headache. "How about I want you to do what's best for him?"

Alex drew in a long, slow breath. "How did I forget that sometimes you don't play fairly?"

Jensen set his jaw and said nothing.

His former mentor looked at him for a long moment, assessing his stance. Jensen knew he looked tired—he hadn't slept much since returning to the States, turning his worry over Jared into midnight oil that he burned trying to find anything to do with this Colt. He'd learned some interesting historical tidbits about Samuel Colt the gunmaker, but nothing of any use. The tension over the ticking clock in the back of his head, combined with an uneasy reluctance to face the boxes of Sam's possessions behind him in the conference room, had put him in a foul mood all morning, aided by Jared's weak insistence that he didn't want to sleep with Jensen for fear of keeping him up.

And now Jared was apparently trying to push him away, but like it or not, he was going to watch over Jared.

"I'll take you to him," Alex finally sighed.

Jensen gave him a nod of thanks, finally unfolding his arms from his chest.

Alex led him down the hallway to an elevator that required the keycard around Alex's neck to call. Once inside, they went up three floors in silence, the doors opening on the opposite side of the elevator from where they'd entered. Jensen followed Alex down another hallway that was almost aggressive in its plainness, but somehow he still managed to recognize it. "Isn't this where—?"

"Yes, it is." Alex stopped in front of a door with a small window and gestured toward it. It might not have been the identical room to where Jared spent a few days trying to learn to be Sam Winchester, but it was pretty close. "I hope you know what you're doing."

"I hope you do, too," Jensen muttered, grabbing the door knob and shoving the door open.

Jared looked up with a start from where he was hunched in front of a small TV screen. Then he tore off the headphones he was wearing. "Jen, what is it? Did you find it?"

Jensen grimaced. He should have realized Jared would leap to that conclusion. "No, we didn't."

Jared's shoulders sagged. "Then why are you—" His gaze slid to Alex, hovering in the doorway behind Jensen, and turned into a glare.

"Don't blame him," Jensen said, moving inside and letting the door close behind him, shutting Alex out. "What are you doing up here?"

A guilty look flashed over Jared's face, but he lifted his chin. "I told Alex not to tell you."

"Why?" Jensen dropped into the chair across the table from Jared. He couldn't see what was on the TV screen, or on the labels of the disks stacked next to it, but he could guess.

"You had other things to worry about," Jared replied, tracing a line in the wooden tabletop with one finger.

"Not right now." Jensen reached out and closed his hand over Jared's, stilling the nervous motion. "Nothing's more important to me right now than you."

Jared looked down at their joined hands, head tilted forward so that his bangs fell over his eyes. "What if we don't find it?" he asked in a small voice. "What if they let everyone know that I'm alive?"

"We'll deal with that if we have to," Jensen replied with more confidence than he felt. "Thanks to Alex, you've got a very powerful organization on your side. If this gun exists, we will find it. If it doesn't, then we'll figure out what to do and we'll make it happen. But right now, we're not going to focus on that, okay?"

There was a pause. Then Jared gave a small nod, and Jensen squeezed his hand. "All right," he said. "You ready to go back and get some rest?"

Jared's eyes flickered toward the screen, which was angled away from Jensen. "You go on ahead."

"Nope." Jensen gave his hand another squeeze. "Looking at those tapes is not going to tell you anything that you don't already know."

Jared rolled his eyes. "Alex told you, I get it."

"No, he didn't." Jensen tapped the stack of tapes. "But it's what I would do. Try to figure out what I did wrong. Why I didn't look enough like the guy I was supposed to be imitating to stave off three people who didn't know him."

Surprise flashed across Jared's face, followed by a sneer. "Guess it's pretty obvious how I screwed it up, anyway."

Jensen let out a sigh. "You're not him, Jay. And no one's asking you to be."

Jared pulled his lower lip between his teeth. When it rolled back out, red and rough, he said, "Maybe I am."

Jensen was startled enough that he didn't object when Jared jerked his hand away and shoved his chair back hard enough to hit the wall. "See you at the hotel." The door slammed shut behind Jared before Jensen could do more than reach out to him. 

On the screen was the frozen image of Sam Winchester, his expression inscrutable as he stared into the camera, as if mocking Jensen with the things he didn't know.


	15. Book 3 (San Francisco), Chapter 3

Jared woke to the low murmur of voices coming from the room next door. He struggled to sit up, the sheets and blanket twisted around his legs. Another restless night, then—maybe it was good that he'd slept separately from Jensen again. Three nights back in the U.S., and at least he wasn't having nightmares, but he wasn't feeling well-rested, either. 

Stretching out his arms, Jared shifted toward the edge of the bed, enjoying the good kind of soreness from the workout he'd had in the hotel gym last night instead of the stiffness of abused muscles. Sara had been right about one thing—his own body had been used against him, and he was determined not to let that happen again. The stronger he was, the easier that would be.

It was Jensen's voice that he heard in the living area of their suite, and the slightly higher-pitched response had to be Alex. Jared was trying to decide whether or not to listen in at the door when he heard the front door of the suite shut.

Jensen cracked open the bedroom door a second later. "Hey," he said, eyes briefly lighting up before uncertainty crept over his face. 

Jared realized that Jensen hadn't seen him like this since rescuing him, bare-chested with the marks of the knife and taser fading but visible on his skin. He resisted the urge to grab for the t-shirt puddled on the nightstand. "Hey."

Jensen swallowed. "How'd you sleep?"

"Better," Jared replied. It was mostly true. "Thanks for…" He gestured toward the room behind Jensen.

Shrugging one shoulder, Jensen said, "It's not bad for a couch."

Jared nodded. They hadn't talked about why they weren't sharing a bed even though they both knew it wasn't about jet lag or nightmares. Apparently that wasn't going to change this morning.

"So, listen," Jensen said, tapping on the doorframe with one hand. "I'm going to be away today, but Terry's out in the hallway, and he can take you to Ravenswood or wherever else you want to go."

Jared narrowed his eyes. "Did you find something?" 

"Maybe. The bastards who took you said the last place they knew this gun was was some guy's cabin in Colorado. We found the cabin."

"Great." Jared stood up. "When do we leave?"

" _We_ are not leaving. I'll be back by the end of the day."

"Oh, so you're going to fly halfway across the country and back while I twiddle my thumbs?" Jared shook his head. "I'm coming along."

"Jay, we don't know what's there, who this Elkins guy is or if he's even still around. It's better if you wait here."

"Better for who?" Jared planted his hands on his hips. "It's November 30, Jen. I've got twenty days left. I'm not spending any of them sitting around in a hotel room if there's something we could be looking into."

Jensen gave a sharp shake of his head. "The last time I let you—"

"You don't _let_ me do things!" Jared threw up his hands. "It's my life that's going to be shot to hell if we can't find this gun, you know."

Jensen's mouth twisted in a grimace. His voice much lower than before, he replied, "Funny, I thought it was _our_ lives."

Instantly, Jared's anger drained. "Jen, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that."

"Whatever." Jensen's hand was over his mouth, his eyes cast down toward the floor. Finally he said, "The car leaves in fifteen minutes for the airport."

"I'll be there," Jared said quietly.

Jensen gave a curt nod and walked away.

Jared let out a huge sigh, dropping back down onto the bed. _Fucked that one up, didn't you?_ , he said to himself. Why was this so hard all of a sudden? It wasn't like they weren't used to working together under pressure. Hell, the first time they'd kissed, Jensen had claimed that it was only the pressure that was drawing them together and making them think they were attracted to each other. And they'd had to rely on people they couldn't completely trust before, while this time, they had a strong ally with more resources than Jared could have dreamed of. 

And yet he'd never had as short a fuse all through Europe as he did right now, never felt this awkward distance between him and Jensen that he somehow managed to keep widening. 

Jared shook his head. He could make it up to Jensen later, and Jensen would understand. Right now, they had a plane to catch.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The wheels of the small jet touched down smoothly on the runway, followed by the roar of the brakes and the engines reversing. Jensen tapped his foot on the floor, impatient to be out of here and on their way. The two hours from San Francisco had been mostly silent, Jared curling up across two seats in the Gulfstream as soon as they'd taken off to sleep, or at least to pretend to sleep, leaving Jensen to review the few details that they knew with the two Ravenswood people who had come along.

Since Jared left Sydney, he'd been guarded by Terry, a man of average size and height and completely unremarkable features under close-cropped brown hair but with the same watchfulness and catlike reflexes that Jensen had. The other passenger on their flight was a woman a little older than Jensen. Liza would also be hard to pick out of a crowd unless, like Jensen, you knew what to look for: the way she constantly but subtly looked around, taking in her surroundings and preparing possible responses. She was dressed in the cheap suit of a federal agent, as was Jensen, weapon holstered at her hip and surely at least one more tucked away somewhere that he couldn't see. 

As they taxied to the small terminal, Jensen looked out the window at the snow-capped peaks behind the runway. He was impressed that someone had managed to find enough flat ground up here to lay down a runway. Then again, considering they were only fifty miles from some of the biggest ski resorts in the country, maybe it wasn't that surprising. The row of Gulfstreams parked along part of the tarmac suggested they weren't the only ones eschewing commercial air transport to get to the Colorado mountains.

However, they were headed in the other direction from the ski slopes. Manning, CO, was a little dot on U.S. 40, and the cabin that was the last known whereabouts of the gun they were seeking was up a side canyon from the highway. Ravenswood's people had tracked down Daniel Elkins' name from 2005 tax records; Jensen wasn't sure whether that old date meant the man was gone or that he'd retreated from his governmental obligations, another hermit up in the mountains. Jensen and Liza would be posing as ATF agents tracking down a gun that was used in a crime, their pretence for getting their hands on the Colt, though they obviously had to be prepared for resistance. Terry would stick with Jared until Jensen gave them the all clear, hopefully with the damn gun in his hands. Then they'd get on the plane and go back to San Francisco, one neat little day trip to get what they were looking for in order keep Jared and his sister safe.

Jensen knew it couldn't possibly be that easy, but it was nice to fantasize.

Across the aisle from him, Jared stirred and sat up. He squinted out the window where the sun was reflecting blindingly bright off the snow on either side of the runway. "Guess we're here," he called over the diminishing sound of the plane's engines.

"Yeah," Jensen replied, voice raised. "There should be a rental car waiting for us."

Jared nodded. "You're gonna make me stay in it, aren't you?"

He sounded tired rather than angry, and Jensen gave him a rueful smile. "Just till we know what's going on up there."

Nodding again, Jared said, "'M sorry I snapped at you this morning."

Jensen held up his hands. "I should have handled it differently, I know."

Jared opened his mouth, then paused, looking frustrated. With a quick glance at the front of the plane, he slid out of his seat and across the aisle, next to Jensen. It was closer than he'd been to Jensen since their embrace at the San Francisco airport, his sudden presence almost overwhelming, and Jensen drew in a sharp breath as Jared leaned even closer to murmur in his ear. "Just don't shut me out, okay? I need to know what's going on."

_Like you should talk_ , Jensen thought, but instead of saying it, he nodded. "I just want to take care of all this for you, make it all go away," he admitted, putting his hand over Jared's. He let out a half-laugh as he came to the realization. "I want to make it all better."

Jared's expression softened. "Jen."

Before Jensen knew it, Jared was leaning forward, clumsily pressing his lips against Jensen's in the tight confines of the airplane seats. Caught by surprise, Jensen parted his lips, and when Jared tilted his head to get a better angle, it was all Jensen could do not to moan. They hadn't kissed since Jared had gotten back, not since he was lying injured and pale in a hospital bed, and the sudden surge of need that swept over Jensen at even this brief touch was almost dizzying.

He briefly cupped Jared's jaw before gently pushing him back, much as he wanted to keep going. The plane's engines had cut off as they came to a stop, and Jensen lowered his voice. "Maybe we should spend some time talking later tonight."

Jared looked hesitant, but when Jensen swept a thumb over his cheek, he nodded shyly. "That'd be good."

"Good." Jensen smiled, coaxing a smile out of Jared in return and feeling some of his internal restlessness settle down. "Now let's go do this."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

An hour later, Jared was thrumming with nerves like he hadn't felt since arriving in Sydney. They'd driven up an unplowed dirt road that was mushy snow in some places and slick ice in others, with the drop-off below the road's edge increasing with every switchback they took. Liza seemed like a competent driver, but it was still nerve-wracking to feel the SUV slide as the wheels sought for traction, and Jared fought the urge to close his eyes or reach out for Jensen's hand.

When they plunged down a narrow, tree-lined drive that was covered in snow as deep as the SUV's bumper, Jared had the feeling they weren't going to find anyone at Elkins' cabin to ask questions of. Jensen seemed to think the same, given that once they came to a stop, he only briefly looked back at Jared without any additional admonishments to stay put before hopping out of the vehicle and into the snow.

Jared leaned down from his seat in the middle of the vehicle and peered through the windshield as Jensen and Liza approached the ramshackle cabin. It appeared that no one had lived there for a while, the grey wood looking like it would blow over in a strong wind, and Jared's nerves started to turn to dread. Jensen forced his way through knee-deep snow to the front door, which was hanging slightly ajar. Jared could see a drift of snow trailing inside the cabin, and he sat back against the seat with a sigh. "No one's there."

"Looks like," Terry agreed. Jared had already learned that he was a man of few words, which made him an ideal bodyguard if there had to be someone hanging around him twenty-four-seven who wasn't Jensen. 

Jensen was drawing his gun and inching the door open, Liz covering him from behind. Jared tried not to be envious of her—it wasn't that he _wanted_ to be in a potentially life-threatening situation right now, and all things considered, it was best to have someone who was competent watching Jensen's back, but he still felt a pang of jealousy. They'd managed to keep each other safe for weeks while on the run, and it still felt odd to cede the role of protector to someone else. He was grateful to have all of the resources and assistance that Alex could wrangle for them, but it was hard to trust strangers when he and Jensen had been on their own for so long.

While Jared was lost in his ruminations, Jensen had entered the cabin. A few minutes passed before he came out again, shaking his head. Jared's stomach dropped. He'd been so hopeful that they were going to find the gun here, or at least a clue about how to find it.

He hopped out of the SUV, the snow instantly soaking through the bottoms of his jeans. Jensen met him halfway back to the car. "We'll search through the place, but it's a mess. All the wiring and everything's been stripped, probably by people looking for copper. If the gun was ever here, it's probably gone."

Jared swallowed hard. "Elkins?"

The grimace that crossed Jensen's face was brief but evocative. "He's…still here. What's left of him, anyway."

"How long?" Jared asked.

"It's mostly bones, so a few years, I would guess." Jensen gestured up over his head. "There's a big hole in the ceiling on the far side, like a branch or something fell in at some point, although I don't see it. Most of the snow that came in seems to have blown out the back door."

"Can you tell how he died?" It might have been morbid curiosity more than anything else, but it also might give them a clue.

Jensen grimaced again. "Whatever it was, it was pretty bloody. At least that's what I assume is staining all the floorboards."

"Yeesh." Jared frowned and then straightened his shoulders. "Guess we'd better start looking."

Jensen put a hand on his arm. "Jay, you really don't want to go in there."

"I'm a doctor. I've seen dead bodies before."

"Not like this, you haven't," Jensen returned.

Putting his hands on his hips, Jared replied, "I'm not gonna puke or pass out or anything. Give me a break."

Jensen stared up at him, and Jared could almost read his thoughts from the expressions flitting across his face. He took a step closer to Jensen and said more quietly, "I appreciate that you want to protect me. But I need to be _doing_ something, and you need the extra pair of hands."

There was a pause. Then Jensen let out a long, slow breath. "Christ, how do you _do_ that?"

"Know what you're thinking?" When Jensen nodded, Jared shrugged one shoulder. "You're easy."

Jensen rolled his eyes. "I trained for _months_ not to give anything away from my expression or my body language. And you come in and…" He swept a hand out from his side.

"You're the one who said you want to make it all go away." Jared gave him a pointed look and then added, "Can we go inside before my feet fall off?"

Barking out a laugh, Jensen said, "Yeah, all right. Just—watch where you step."

With that ominous warning, he led the way through the snow and up the rickety steps.

It was a two-room cabin, probably warm and cozy once upon a time, but now stark and cold. What wasn't covered in snow had thick dust on top of it, marred only by a few footprints that were themselves overlain with dust, and Jared's spirits sank lower. No one had been here for a very long time.

No one except the dead man in the middle of the floor. Jared looked before he could help himself, and even with Jensen's warning, he felt himself turning green. The body itself was torn clothing over bare bones, head canted back at an odd angle where it sprawled on the floor. The lighting wasn't great, even with the flashlights Terry had brought from the SUV, but it was enough to see a swathe of rusty crimson dried over the wooden floorboards, a spatter pattern extending a couple of feet outward from the body.

"Damn," Jared muttered, trying not to picture what that would have looked like when the man was alive. Or more accurately, freshly dead.

"Yeah." Jensen cleared his throat. "Why don't you start in the other room with Terry?"

Jared pressed his lips together in a grimace, but knowing that sometimes it was better to give in gracefully, he turned to the smaller room.

Night fell early in the canyon. Given that it was the beginning of December, they were down to only their flashlights by four in the afternoon. Jared had lost count of how many times he sneezed, clouds of dust coming off of everything he touched. He was glad they had latex gloves to wear, because the thought of going through all of this stuff with his bare hands would have had him scrubbing with soap for days.

Not that there was a lot to go through—Jensen had been right about scavengers coming for the wiring and the pipes, given the big gashes in the walls and the missing fixtures, but there was surprisingly little else in the place: moth-eaten clothing, a few family photo albums, and some boxes of bullets, but no guns. Jared was starting to despair of finding anything when he stepped further into the small closet and grunted in surprised pain.

"What is it?" Jensen called from the main room.

Jared bent down and felt around the contours of the square shape that he'd barked his shin on, growing excited when he felt a dial on the front. "I think it's a safe."

They dragged it out into the room. It was only a couple of feet on each side, grey metal that had darkened with time, the dial on the front chipped and scarred. "Any idea where to find the combination?" Jared asked.

Liza knelt down and put her ear to the dial, blonde ponytail falling against the safe. "Give me a minute."

Jared raised his eyebrows as she started to slowly rotate the dial. When he looked at Jensen, he saw an impressed moue on his face. Somehow, Jared wasn't surprised when a few minutes later, the safe swung open and Liza flashed him a quick, triumphant grin.

Jensen drew in a sharp breath, and Jared quickly looked from Liza to the safe. His heart began to thump as he saw a long, low rectangular box. "Is that…"

"Looks like a gun box," Jensen said quietly. "Liza?"

She carefully pulled it out and set it on top of the safe. Holding his breath, Jared watched as she flipped open the latch and lifted the cover.

His heart sank when he saw it was empty. "Fuck."

Terry was bending closer, examining the padded interior. "This is long enough to have held that Colt," he said. "Based on the drawing, anyway."

"So it _was_ here," Jared said. "They were right."

"Guess so," Jensen said, looking a bit stunned.

"Does that mean they were right about Sam taking it, too?" Jared asked.

Jensen shot him a quick look. "We have no way of knowing that."

"There's a fingerprint kit in my bag." When everyone turned to look at her, Liz shrugged. "We were supposed to be federal agents, after all."

Wiping his hand over his jaw, Jensen said, "Fine, then bring the box. We'll dust it for prints and scan them into our database."

Two hours later, sitting on a worn crimson armchair in the Red Springs Motel in Manning, Jared was simultaneously unsurprised and stunned to see Liza's laptop screen blink with a positive match. 

Whatever gun had been in that box, Sam Winchester had handled it.


	16. Book 3 (San Francisco), Chapter 4

The flight back to San Francisco was as quiet as the journey out, but for different reasons. This time, instead of imagining various scenarios and preparing himself for any of them, Jensen was turning over in his head what had happened and whether they knew anything more than they had on the way out. A day of poking around the town of Manning with Liza as federal agents hadn't yielded much that was useful. The people who knew of Daniel Elkins said that he'd always traveled a lot and they assumed he'd just moved away without telling anyone since he hadn't been close to anyone in town. Jensen suspected that some of them knew more than they were letting on, at least about the theft of the wiring in the cabin. But every time they asked about a gun Elkins might have had, no one knew what they were talking about, and he was inclined to believe them.

The town was too small to have its own sheriff, and the county police hadn't seemed overly surprised that Daniel Elkins had died years ago without anyone noticing. "Even these mountain men types get surprised by a grizzly or a cougar now and then," the young deputy who talked to them explained. "That's the problem with shutting yourself off from society like that."

Jensen nodded impatiently. "We're looking for a specific gun he might have had, a Colt. Any chance that it passed through your hands after Elkins' death?"

The deputy shook his head. "I can check our files, but if we didn't know he was gone…" He trailed off and shrugged.

"Deputy, it's a crucial piece of evidence in a federal crime," Liza lied through her teeth. "If there's any chance you might have a record of it, we would really appreciate it."

Despite the deputy jumping to it after what Liza explained in an undertone to Jensen was her mom voice, the Routt County paper and electronic files were empty of any mention of an old Colt. The deputy promised to check the Colorado database as well and get back to them, but since Ravenswood was going through the state databases one by one, Jensen doubted this guy was going to have any better luck.

So there they were, on the Gulfstream flying over the Rockies, as empty-handed as when they'd arrived. Maybe not quite, Jensen thought, looking at the duffel bag that held the empty gun box. They had verified that Mick had been right about Daniel Elkins being connected to Sam. The question that Jensen was racking his brain to figure out was, how? How had Sam known this modern-day mountain man who had died such a vicious death?

Jared was seated next to him, which was certainly an improvement over the flight out. They hadn't gotten to have their promised conversation last night, too busy chasing down leads. Now that all of that sort of work had been put back into Ravenswood's hands, maybe the two of them would have a moment to themselves.

"How are you doing?" Jensen asked quietly, leaning closer to Jared's ear to be heard over the roar of the engines outside. 

Jared shrugged. "All right, I guess." He gave Jensen a tiny smile. "It's kind of like being on a roller coaster again, you know?"

"Yeah, no kidding." Jensen thought for a moment, remembering previous assignments with Sam. "Seems like it's always this see-saw between action and boredom. You kinda get used to it, though."

"I don't think I could ever get used to this," Jared said in a low voice, looking away.

Jensen felt a twinge of guilt when he realized this wasn't like any kind of assignment he'd been on before. Jared's life might well be in the balance, and his own besides, and even though that had been the case all through Europe, somehow it felt different now. "No, you shouldn't have to," he agreed. "No one should."

"You did," Jared returned. The plane gave a small bounce as they flew over a cloud, and Jared shifted his long legs in the seat. "Sam, too."

Putting a hand on Jared's knee, Jensen said, "We always had a choice. It was a job for us. It wasn't our lives at stake, not as the subjects of the mission. It wasn't the lives of the people we loved."

Jared nodded, staring out the window. After a moment, he turned to Jensen and asked, "Why do you think he chose it? The life of a secret agent or whatever?" 

Jensen had been thinking about that more and more since his spotty memory returned, especially after Alex's visit to Morro Bay. "I think he was good at what he did," he said slowly. "Even if I don't know how he got that way. And I think maybe this was one of the ways he could put all of those skills to use."

"Legally?" Jared asked, eyebrows lifted.

Jensen snorted. "Yeah, I guess so."

Jared nodded. His tongue shot out to moisten his lips, and while under other circumstances Jensen would have found it distracting, the hesitation in Jared's eyes canceled it out. "What do you think he wanted with that gun?" Jared asked.

"We don't even know that he had it," Jensen said slowly.

"No, we don't, but we know he was there." When Jensen nodded, Jared went on carefully, "Do you think he took it from Elkins?"

"You mean stole it from him?" Jensen asked.

Jared bit his lip but didn't reply.

"Whoa." Jensen sat up straighter in his seat. "Sam was not a thief."

"That gun appears to be pretty valuable," Jared said. "Considering the lengths some people are willing to go to in order to get it." He drew a deep breath and went on, "What if Sam was just as desperate?"

Jensen shook his head. "He wouldn't have had any reason to be. Not that I wouldn't have known about."

Jared carefully folded his hands on his lap. "There was a calendar hanging up on the wall in the back room of the cabin. It was kind of torn up, but it was from November 2005. That must have been the last time Elkins was alive."

"We'll check back with the county coroner once they've had a chance to do the autopsy to verify that," Jensen mused.

"That's not my point." Jared looked sideways at him through his bangs. "Where were you in November 2005?"

Jensen frowned. How could he be expected to remember—

Oh. July of that year was the bombing they hadn't prevented, but November was the one they _had_. "I was laid up with a broken leg," he said. "Sam went to Bali; that's when he met Adil Remhani."

"Is that the only place he went?" Jared asked quietly.

Shrugging, Jensen said, "I don't know, he didn't tell me about all of his assignments."

"Could he have been here? In Colorado?"

"Why?" Jensen asked. He was starting to raise his voice, and he forced himself to keep it down so the plane's other occupants wouldn't hear. "For what possible reason? Ravenswood had never heard of this guy. Sam wouldn't have been here on an assignment, not without them knowing about it."

"Maybe it wasn't on an assignment." The plane shook as they flew over another puff of cloud. "I guess what I'm trying to ask is, how well did you really know him, Jensen?"

"As well as anyone did," Jensen retorted. "Well enough to know he wouldn't have traveled to the middle of nowhere to get some gun when he had access to all of the weapons he could want through Ravenswood."

"Like that mini-scythe or whatever that was in his stuff?" Jared laid a hand over Jensen's where it still rested on Jared's knee. "I'm not trying to be difficult. I just want you to consider that you might be finding out things about Sam that you don't want to know."

"Like what, that he killed Elkins to take his gun?" Jensen scoffed.

Jared didn't say a word, just stared back at him.

Jensen stared at him incredulously. "No. No way. You saw all of that blood. Whoever killed Elkins was fucking psychotic. There is no way Sam had anything to do with that."

"I hope you're right," Jared said quietly.

"Damn it." Jensen pinched the bridge of his nose. "You don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"I probably don't," was all Jared said as he turned back toward the window.

They didn't say a word to each other for the rest of the flight.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

For once, it was Jensen who pleaded exhaustion and headed straight to bed, or at least to the hotel suite's couch. Jared flipped through channels on the TV in the bedroom until well past midnight, keeping the volume down even though he doubted Jensen was sleeping next door. Letting out a huge sigh, he slumped back against the pillows. This was why he had argued with himself for at least half the flight back as to whether or not he should bring up his concerns with Jensen about what Sam might have had to do with the gun not being in Elkins' cabin. Then Jensen had made his worst fears come true by brushing him off and taking offense all at the same time.

He remembered their conversation in their kitchen in Morro Bay, what seemed like a lifetime ago. Jensen had been so concerned that Jared not go too deep into Sam's head because he might not like what he found there. How ironic was it that now, when Jared was pointing out that there might have been parts to Sam's life that were darker than expected, Jensen was the one who didn't want to hear it?

For once, Jared was glad that Jensen wasn't in bed with him because of the freedom it gave him to toss and turn and sprawl in sleeplessness. He finally fell asleep in the small hours of the morning, dreaming in disjointed fragments about the ruined cabin and Daniel Elkins' remains, the empty gun box a taunting ache in his mind.

When he woke, Jensen was slipping through the bedroom on his way from the shower, towel around his waist and another wrapped around his hair. Another time, Jared would have teased him about how it made him look like a spa-goer, but the atmosphere in the room wasn't light enough for anything like that.

"Morning," Jensen said, hesitating in the middle of the room.

Jared sat up, pushing away the tangled covers. "Morning."

"How'd you sleep?" Jensen asked.

There was a time for being polite, and then there was a time for being blunt. "Like crap."

Jensen's lips twitched. "Yeah, me too."

Jared fought back the urge to say, "Good," and instead nodded.

Jensen let out a sigh, shoulders slumping. He came closer, not meeting Jared's eyes, until he was standing at the foot of the bed. "I'm sorry, Jay. I was kind of a dick to you yesterday."

"And not in a good way," Jared murmured. He was still angry, but the possibility of forgiveness was there, and he wanted Jensen to know it.

"No, not at all." Jensen gestured at the bed, and Jared nodded, feeling a small hurt that Jensen had to ask, even if only with a gesture. When he sat down with one leg folded beneath himself and pulled the towel off of his head before tossing it on the floor, Jared had the sudden urge to lunge out and pull him close, to lessen the distance between them. But Jensen seemed like he had chosen the distance for a reason, and so Jared straightened up so that he was leaning back against the headboard.

"I'm sorry I didn't take seriously what you were saying yesterday," Jensen started. "I think the first thing that popped into my mind when you started accusing Sam was that you were jealous of him."

Jared blinked. "That's so wrong I don't even know where to start."

"I know." Jensen held up a hand. "I know better, and that's why I didn't say anything about it. But maybe it was still in the back of my mind when I was blowing you off instead of listening to what you were telling me like the goddamn professional I used to be."

"Jen, it's not an easy thing to talk about." Jared folded his legs and leaned forward, elbows on the insides of his knees. "And I don't want to accuse him of anything, I really don't. I know how much he meant to you, and it's okay for you to defend him."

"As long as I'm not doing it blindly." Jensen ran his hand over his mouth and chin. "We might need a code word for you to tell me when I'm being an asshole."

"I think you can figure that out for yourself," Jared said, raising his eyebrows.

Letting out a gust of breath, Jensen went on, "Like ignoring you last night after saying we were going to talk."

"We have other priorities right now."

"Nothing is more important to me than you," Jensen said quietly, green eyes fixed on Jared's.

He drew in a breath at the intensity of Jensen's gaze. "Jen…"

"I mean it." Jensen squared his shoulders, turning more fully toward him. "I love you, Jay. Nothing's more important to me than keeping you safe. Except maybe making you happy." He looked away. "Not that I've ever been able to do that."

"Hey." That time, Jared did reach out to him, and he was only half surprised when Jensen crawled forward until he was sitting beside Jared, the towel still wrapped around his waist. "We're not exactly normal, it's true." Jensen snorted, and Jared went on, "And it might not sound like much, but you make me as happy as I can be right now. Until I know that we're both safe, and I can be with my sister again…in this other life that I'm living right now, you _do_ make me happy, Jen. You should know that."

Jensen leaned into him, warm and damp against his side. "For what it's worth, you do, too."

He felt warmth flare inside at the words. "It's worth a lot," he said, taking Jensen's hand in his. "I love you, too, you know."

From the corner of his eye, he saw Jensen turn toward him, and when he raised his head to look at him, Jensen was _right there_. So it was completely automatic to lean forward and close his eyes, and a second later his nose was bumping Jensen's cheek.

He heard Jensen give a half-laugh, and then his palm was warm on Jared's face, turning him slightly, and _then_ their mouths met. 

Jared stayed still for a moment, hardly daring to breathe. He almost couldn't remember the last time he'd thoroughly kissed Jensen, sometime before the disaster in Sydney, and he hadn't realized until now how much he'd missed it. At the hesitant slide of Jensen's tongue, he parted his lips and welcomed Jensen inside.

Instantly, Jensen let out a low, desperate little groan, and suddenly Jared was flat against the headboard with a lapful of Jensen. His hands automatically came up to grab Jensen's ass as their mouths slanted against each other, and while it was amazing that Jensen had somehow managed to keep his towel around his hips, it was unfortunate that it was terrycloth and not smooth skin under Jared's grasping fingers.

Jensen's hands were warm on his shoulders, and it wasn't until Jared tried to pull him closer that he realized that Jensen was keeping him at arms' length on purpose despite the increasing heat of their kiss. Confused, he pulled his head back to look up at Jensen, who was kneeling over him, eyes focused on Jared's lips. "What is it?" 

Jensen let out a long sigh, ruffling Jared's bangs. "I told Alex I'd be there in fifteen minutes. That was ten minutes ago." He ran a thumb over Jared's lower lip, eyes tracking the movement and sending a shiver down Jared's spine. "Hell if I want to be anywhere but here right now."

"I know." He ran his hand up Jensen's back, fingers tracing the familiar scars he found there. "We'll have time, Jen. We will."

"Yeah," Jensen agreed, the doubt in his eyes belying his words. He quickly gave Jared another peck and sat back on his knees, almost out of reach. "Guess we'd better get going, huh?"

Jared tilted his head to the side. "Did Alex ask to see both of us?"

"Doesn't matter." Jensen patted his thigh as he wriggled backwards on the bed and then stood up. "I'm not doing this without you."

The smile that stretched Jared's cheeks felt unfamiliar, but it was welcome all the same.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It might have only been a few blocks from the hotel to Ravenswood's office, but security protocols demanded that they make the journey in a dark-windowed SUV, Terry driving and Liza in the passenger seat. Jensen knew from the huff Jared gave as they were escorted down to the garage that he thought this was ridiculous, and to be honest, Jensen did, too. Mick and his fellow extorters weren't about to make a move on them, not when they needed the weapon they thought Jensen and Jared could get for them. Besides, Jensen felt like if he could take care of Jared while running from both the Panther _and_ his own people, he could manage a few city blocks. 

He was also frustrated because it put a damper on the hope that he had felt after the short conversation in Jared's bedroom—in _their_ bedroom, he was hoping, given the way Jared had responded to his kiss. Goddamn, but they needed some time alone together.

From the way they were greeted at the office, however, Jensen had the feeling that wasn't going to happen anytime soon. A tight-lipped assistant ushered them to Alex's office, high on the eastern side of the building with an amazing view of the Bay Bridge that Jensen had absolutely no eyes for. Alex was simultaneously on the phone and his computer, gesturing for them to sit down with a flicker of his eyes. Jensen recognized the frenetic movements from when something had broken wide open on an assignment and things were about to kick into high gear, and he could feel his own adrenaline starting to flow.

When he looked at the chair beside his, for a brief second, he was surprised not to see Sam sitting there.

Jared's brow was furrowed, but Jensen shook it off and nodded to indicate that he was okay. It was just then that Alex put the phone down, and both of them turned to him in anticipation.

He didn't waste any time. "We think we found it."

"Where?" they asked in unison.

He held out a data tablet with a map on the screen. "In Arizona. In a small town called Jeremiah in the northern part of the state."

Jensen reached out to take the tablet, his other hand coming up to rub at the scar over his ear. That name sounded familiar, but he couldn't think of why. 

"How'd you find it?" Next to him, Jared was ignoring the map, his attention focused on Alex. "Sam's journal?"

"No, we weren't able to recover anything from that. State firearms database." Alex cleared his throat. "It records all guns that have been used in a crime."

Jensen frowned. "What crime was it used in?"

Alex briefly looked at his computer screen, a stalling tactic that Jensen remembered all too well. When he looked back at Jensen, his face was grim. "The murder of a police officer."

"Shit." Jared blinked a few times. "How sure are you that it's the gun we're looking for?"

For answer, Alex held out a grainy, faxed image of a photograph. It was a close-up of a Colt revolver, symbols etched on the barrel that looked like what Jensen remembered from the sheet Mick had given them. "It's the best lead we've had so far. We're sending someone down there to check it out this afternoon."

"You mean you're sending us down there," Jensen firmly. There was something Alex hadn't told them, and while he didn't know what it was, he knew that there wasn't anyone outside of this room that he would trust to check out that gun.

He cast a quick glance at Jared to see the same determined look on his face. "We can do it," Jared said.

Alex raised his eyebrows. "You realize that this is not a government-sanctioned project. We have no authority whatsoever to walk into a small-town police office and ask to see a piece of evidence they've had locked up for almost five years. Much less take that evidence with us."

"Wait, five years?" Jensen narrowed his eyes, a cold suspicion prickling at the back of his mind.

Alex nodded heavily. "Sergeant Anthony Alonzo was shot and killed on February 4, 2006. There was a man fleeing the scene who dropped the gun, but there were no fingerprints on it, and they never identified a suspect. Jeremiah didn't get hooked up to the state intranet until earlier this year, but even with the gun in their system, there's never been a match."

"Until now," Jared said quietly. 

"February 2006." Jensen was wracking his brain, hoping that he was remembering incorrectly but knowing only too well that he was right. "My cast was off, but I wasn't in the field yet. Sam was still doing assignments on his own."

"I checked our records." Alex reluctantly met his eyes. "I have no idea where Sam was on February 4."

"Wait." Jared leaned forward in his seat. "I know we know Sam handled the box that the gun might have been in, but why do you think he had something to do with this cop being killed?"

"Because of where it happened," Jensen said heavily, noting the surprised glance Alex gave him. "Jeremiah, Arizona, was where Sam's father and brother were killed when he was in college."

Jared drew in a sharp breath. "How?"

"Animal attack," Alex said.

Jensen snorted. "That was the official report, but I know Sam didn't believe it. Not that he ever told me what he _did_ believe, but it wasn't wild animals."

"You think it was foul play?" Jared asked. "Maybe he went there with this gun to take care of whoever had killed his family. Maybe the police officer was an accident."

"It was a single shot to the forehead," Alex said in a low voice. "Not likely to have been an accident."

Jensen closed his eyes. He'd made his peace long ago with the fact that Sam was always going to keep part of himself off limits, that Jensen would never have known everything about him even if they had had more than a year and a half together. But if he had known something like this might be lying under the surface, he might not have been so willing to let it go.

"Alex, I have to go to Arizona," he said. "I don't trust anyone outside this room to deal with this. If Sam really—" He broke off and shook his head. 

Alex's gaze was full of understanding and sympathy that Jensen really didn't want right now. "We'll have the jet ready to go in an hour."

Beside him, Jared quietly cleared his throat. Without looking at him, Jensen said, "Jay goes, too."

The sympathy turned into shrewd assessment, but Jensen met Alex's gaze unflinchingly, and from the corner of his eye he could see Jared's jaw set and shoulders back. "All right," Alex finally said. "But so do Terry and Liza. You need backup, and maybe a partner in the field."

Jensen shook his head. "You said your people aren't authorized to do this. Posing as federal agents in Colorado when we're asking questions about a man who went missing is one thing. Asking to take material evidence away with us is something else."

"And what if they aren't willing to hand over that evidence?" Alex asked.

Jensen favored him with a small smirk. "Then it's even more important that it not be traced to you."


	17. Book 3 (San Francisco), Chapter 5

Jared felt like his fake FBI badge was burning a hole in his jacket. 

They'd waited in Ravenswood's offices only long enough for IDs to be minted for the two of them, and then they were on a plane to Arizona. Jared asked no questions about how Ravenswood had the ability to fake federal IDs so quickly, or why they'd be willing to do so for something that was pretty much off the books, and no one told him. Either he and Jensen were going to be in debt to Alex for years to come, or Jensen had already done more than Jared knew for the organization.

They landed in the town of Cottonwood, where a car had been dispatched from Flagstaff to meet them. Jared tried to imitate Jensen's cool, collected attitude in his dark suit and sunglasses as they strode across the tarmac and into the car. He thought of Sam Winchester, of the measured grace in his walk and the calm façade he wore, and he tried to project that as well.

He thought he had it down pretty good by the time they pulled up to the tiny, two-story building in Jeremiah that said "Town Hall" on the front. It was next to the Mile High Grill and Inn, part of a two-block string of buildings perched along the side of a hill overlooking a valley dotted with sagebrush and scrub. Jared climbed out of the car behind Jensen, putting on his sunglasses and trying not to feel like he was in a television show.

"Let me do the talking," Jensen murmured as he put a hand on the door.

"No problem," Jared replied. Maybe he could just stand there with his arms folded and look menacing.

Inside, a woman of about fifty with greying brown hair and a sun-wrinkled face sat at a desk behind a short wooden counter. "Good afternoon, gentlemen," she said. She was eyeing them warily, though her voice was nothing but polite.

"Afternoon, ma'am," Jensen said in his friendliest voice with a hint of Texas. "We're looking for the chief of police."

She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. Jared could see that against the far wall, in front of the windows, there were two glassed-in offices. The one with MAYOR on the door in peeling gilt letters looked empty, but the one reading CHIEF OF POLICE had a pair of crossed feet resting up on a desk, the rest of the room blocked by a file cabinet. "May I tell him who's here?" she asked.

Jensen smoothly reached into his jacket and flipped open his badge. "Agents Harding and Harrison."

Jared started to reach for his badge, but the secretary had already risen to make her way back to the chief's office past a row of brown-colored cubicles. The tarnished nameplate on her desk read, "Angeline Sampson," sitting next to a row of photographs of what Jared guessed were her grandchildren. A moment later, she gestured toward them, and they followed her path.

Inside the office, the occupant had lowered his feet to the ground, though he hadn't risen from his chair. "Kevin Tennyson," he said, extending one beefy hand toward Jensen across the desk. 

Jensen raised an eyebrow, but he did lean across to shake the man's hand. "Agent Harding. This is Agent Harrison."

Jared had to bend down to shake Tennyson's hand, taking in the man's wrinkled uniform shirt, receding hairline, and disinterested gaze. There was nowhere for them to sit in the small office, but he got the feeling they wouldn't have been invited to anyway. 

"So, what can I do for the feds?" Tennyson asked, leaning back in his chair.

"We understand you recently entered some of your evidence files in the state database," Jensen began without preamble. Tennyson gave a short nod, and he went on, "We found a match for a firearm that we've been looking for from a case in Colorado."

"Is that so?" Tennyson asked, dark brown eyes looking back and forth between them.

"We'd like to take a look at it and see if it matches the description we have," Jensen said.

"And what firearm would that be?"

Jared was glad that Jensen was doing the talking, because he was sure that his own voice would have been shaking with nerves. Jensen went on, "It's a Colt. Used in the murder of Anthony Alonzo."

Instantly, Tennyson's face darkened, and he sat up abruptly in his chair. "You know who did it?"

Jensen hesitated, then shook his head. "Not for certain. But we might be able to connect it to another man's death."

"Tony was a good man," Tennyson said. "He didn't deserve to die like that. Shot down like…" Abruptly, he stood up, his chair rolling back and hitting the cinderblock wall. "Wait here. I'll bring it out."

Jared watched him go, his heart suddenly beating triple time. "D'you think he has it?" he hissed.

Jensen turned to face him, briefly putting a hand on his lower back. The simple touch steadied Jared more than he would have thought possible. "We'll see in a minute."

It was more like five minutes before Tennyson came back, a grey metal box tucked under one arm. He had a clipboard in the other, and he waved it at Jensen as soon as he was within range. "Gotta sign in."

Jensen grabbed the clipboard and signed a quick scrawl before passing it to Jared, who did the same. When he was done, Tennyson put the box down on his desk and asked, "What makes you think you'll know this gun on sight?"

"The markings," Jensen said. "There's a Latin phrase on the barrel along with some engravings."

"Anything else?" Tennyson asked, one hand on the lid.

Jared had to literally bite his tongue to keep from snapping at the man. "There's a carving," he said, his voice sounding tight to his own ears. "A pentagram, low on the grip."

"We didn't put that in the database," Tennyson said, eyes narrowing.

It took a moment for that to sink in. "So you have it?" Jared demanded.

He must have looked as threatening as he felt, because the police chief opened the lid on the box right away.

Inside, resting on the bare metal of the box, was a long-barreled, elegant weapon with exactly the carvings they were looking for. "That's it," Jared said, hand shaking as he reached for it.

"Jay," Jensen warned sharply.

Jared pulled his hand back. _Some federal agent you're acting like_ , he reprimanded himself. "Sorry," he said, taking a step back to remove himself from temptation. All he wanted to do was grab the gun and run, get back to the car and back on the plane and get the fuck away from here.

There was the rustle of paper as Jensen unfolded something from his jacket pocket. Jared recognized it as the sketch Mick had given them of the Colt, and he wanted to kick himself for not thinking of bringing it along. Clearly Jensen had been thinking farther ahead than he had.

Jensen smoothed out the paper on the desk, and the three men bent over it. "Where'd you get that?" Tennyson demanded.

"From a witness to our other crime," Jensen lied smoothly. He pulled a rubber glove from his pocket and asked, "May I?" When Tennyson nodded, he snapped the glove on and carefully removed the gun from its box. 

It was a beautiful weapon, Jared thought, heart pounding as he watched Jensen examine the gun in the flickering light of the overhead fluorescents. If a gun could be said to be beautiful. It wasn't just the engravings on the side, or the gothic lettering that said something about evil—his Latin was more than a little rusty. All told, it was a magnificent piece. He could imagine a collector wanting a piece like this, but that couldn't be what the Australians wanted it for, not with all of the trouble they'd gone to.

"It's definitely the piece we're looking for," Jensen said as he carefully laid it back in the box, and if Jared hadn't been listening so closely, he might have missed the slight tremble in his voice. When Jensen straightened up, he drew in a deep breath, looking every inch the federal agent. "We'll need to verify it with our field office in Flagstaff, of course, and run some ballistics tests to see if the bullets match. We can have it back to you in three days."

The lid slammed back down on the box, and Jared jumped. "This gun doesn't leave this office, boys," Tennyson said.

"What?" Jared stared at him. "You can't do that. We're FBI agents."

Tennyson looked at him shrewdly. "Then you know all about jurisdiction and procedure and how to go about borrowing a piece of evidence, don't you?"

"This isn't just any piece of evidence—" 

Jensen's hand on his chest cut him off. "Jay, why don't you go wait out front while I finish up with the chief here."

It wasn't a request, and Jared was about to give Jensen a piece of his mind when he caught the way Jensen was looking at him. It was more plea than warning. Jared realized that he was about to break the trust Jensen had put in getting him this far, and he backed off, raising his hands. "Fine. I'll wait out in the main office."

He turned and walked off, hearing Jensen start in a soothing voice, "What my partner means is that the longer it takes to run our tests—" Then the office door shut behind him and he couldn't make out the words anymore.

"He knows better, but he's too damn stubborn." 

Jared whirled around to see Angeline the secretary looking past him and into the chief's office. Clearing his throat and forcing down the mixture of anger and nerves that was nearly choking him, he asked, "What do you mean?"

She sighed and turned from the game of solitaire on her computer to face him. "Tony was his mentor, you know. Trained him to be a cop, made it so he could get the position here. Kevin—excuse me, Chief Tennyson—was devastated when he was killed. Not that we all weren't. It's a small town, Agent, and to lose a police officer like that…it simply doesn't happen here."

Jared nodded. "Can you tell me what happened? When Sergeant Alonzo was killed?"

She leaned forward in her seat, and Jared realized he'd asked exactly the right question of someone who hadn't had anyone new to tell her story to in a long time. "It was a Thursday night. He'd been acting strange for a couple of days. I've been working here for thirty years, Agent, and I know my men." When Jared nodded earnestly, she went on, "He didn't ask after my daughter and my grandchildren like usual, so I knew something was on his mind. He wasn't himself."

"Had anything major happened recently?" Jared asked. "Any big cases?" He could still hear the rise and fall of Jensen's and Tennyson's voices from behind the closed door, and asking more questions was a good way to distract himself, if nothing else.

"Lord, no." Angeline waved a hand. "The most excitement around here is when one of the tourists has too much to drink at the winery and drives off the road on the way to Mollie's B&B." She tilted her head to the side. "Or when some poor sap encounters a mountain lion while hiking. That's happened a time or two as well." Shaking her head, she went on, "Whatever it was that was distracting him, I'm sure it had to do with why he was killed. But Kevin never wanted to hear it. I think he was afraid we'd find out Tony had been part of a meth lab or something."

Jared's eyebrows shot up. "Do you think he was?"

"Heavens, no." Angeline frowned. "Not really. Kevin and the other officer who found Tony out at the old copper mine saw someone running away that they didn't recognize, someone not from around here. He dropped the gun when he went over the fence, but he ran off before they could catch him. Long legs, Kevin said. Really tall." She squinted up at Jared. "Like you."

He let out a nervous chuckle, not wanting to think too closely about the implications of what she was saying. "I've never been to Arizona before, ma'am."

"Well, it sounds like you might be staying a bit longer than you expected," she said with a nod behind him.

Jensen was coming out of Tennyson's office, his face like a thundercloud. "Agent Harrison, let's go," he snapped. "We're wasting our time here."

Heart sinking, Jared looked down at Jensen's empty hands. They were so close here, so goddamn close! He wondered what it would take for them to overpower Tennyson and grab the damn gun and get out of here.

The warning in Jensen's eyes said he'd been considering the same thing. If he'd rejected it as a plan, Jared was willing to trust his judgment. With a nod to Angeline, he followed Jensen out, wondering what the hell they were supposed to do now and how he was going to go about telling Jensen what Angeline had said.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"I don't believe it."

Seated on the bed across the small motel room, Jared lifted his hands. "I'm just telling you what she told me."

Jensen shook his head and kept pacing in the narrow space between the bathroom door and the wall, wishing he could unhear what Jared had just told him. "You're making it sound like it was Sam who shot the guy."

"She's the one who said he looked like me."

"She said he was tall like you, not that he looked like you." He glared at Jared. He really didn't need this, not on top of the chief of police's refusal to hand over the Colt. "Sam might have been a secretive son of a bitch, but he wasn't a killer." 

He could still remember the first time Sam shot and killed someone in the line of duty. It was clear-cut self-defense, but Sam had practically shut down afterwards, completely at odds with the cool, collected man Jensen had come to know. Not that Jensen had been much better his first time, but it had always stuck out as strange for Sam to have that strong a reaction to killing a man, given how good he was at other aspects of their job.

Across the room, Jared was letting out a breath and lowering his hands. "So how are we going to get the Colt?"

Jensen recognized the tabling of a discussion when he heard one, and if he hadn't been so on edge, he would have been grateful to Jared for it. "Plan B," he said. "Wait till dark, pick the locks, and take it."

Jared's eyebrows shot up. "We're going to break into a police station?"

"No, _I'm_ going to break into a police station. You're going to be waiting in Cottonwood at the plane so that when I get the gun, we can get the hell out of here." Jensen had taken a careful look at the front door of the town hall before they left and had seen one camera over the front door, powered by a cable running to an electrical box outside the building. All he needed to do was unplug the camera and then pick the lock. Whatever security was set up inside couldn't be much more complicated, given how quickly Tennyson had returned from the back room with the Colt.

The mulish set of Jared's jaw was all too familiar. "You need someone with you to watch your back."

"Two people are more likely to get caught than one," Jensen returned. Damn it, couldn't Jared just listen to him for once? "And I can fight my way out if I have to. I don't want to have to worry about you."

"I can take care of myself," Jared retorted. 

"Like you did in DC?" Jensen shot back, his patience finally wearing thin. "Or like you did in Berlin?"

Jared flinched, his head drawing back sharply. "Whatever," he growled, standing up and heading for the door.

The sharp, sinking feeling in Jensen's gut meant that he knew that he'd gone too far. "Wait." Jensen reached out and grabbed Jared's wrist, halting him in his tracks. "I'm sorry, Jay. I didn't mean that."

Jared was facing away from him, his jaw tightly set. He'd taken off his jacket and rolled up his white shirt sleeves as soon as they'd entered the motel room, but his skin was still damp with sweat under Jensen's hand. "Yeah, you did," he said in a low voice.

Jensen sighed. "Maybe I did." He waited until Jared turned to him in shock and then said, "You took care of yourself pretty well both times. Got away from me in Berlin, didn't you?"

Jared let out a huff of breath. "And walked right into another trap."

"They were pretty damn good," Jensen said, raising his eyebrows. "Hell, they caught _me_." That got him something more like a half-laugh, and he stepped closer to Jared, looking up into his eyes. "You not only took care of yourself in Amsterdam, you saved my life, remember? And then in DC, you managed to pull that fire alarm with a goddamn knife in your back and saved us both."

Jared was still quiet, but his muscles had relaxed under Jensen's grip. He searched Jensen's eyes and then looked down at the faded olive-green carpet, broad shoulders slumping. "I know I'm not Sam," he said quietly. "I know I'm not as good of backup as he would be."

"That's not why I—"

Jared held up a hand, and Jensen let him finish. "But it's my fault that we're here. And I have to be able to _do something_. I've been sitting around waiting for weeks, and now that I can actually get out there, I'm not going to wait in the damn car."

Jensen only heard one part of what Jared said. "This is in no way your fault."

"Like hell it's not." Jared lifted his head, eyes a stormy blue-grey. "I wasn't strong enough. If I'd been able to last one more fucking hour, we wouldn't even be here."

"Jared, no." Jensen reached up to palm his cheek. "If I'd found you one hour sooner, we wouldn't be here, either. Blame me before you blame yourself."

Jared was shaking his head. "No. I'm not going to blame you."

"Why not?" Jensen lifted his chin and let go of Jared's face. "Talk about it being someone's fault that we're both here. You should be at Harvard right now being a big fancy doctor, not here with me trying to break into a police station."

"Stop," Jared said, closing his eyes. "We can talk about this some other time. Right now, am I coming with you or not?"

Part of Jensen wanted to insist that no, they couldn't talk about it some other time, not when Jared was being more forthcoming than he had been since returning from Australia. But the cold, strategizing voice in his head—the one that had pretty much run the show when he was playing Dean Winchester—knew an opportunity when it saw one. "Give me half an hour to adjust the plan," Jensen said. "Then I'll fill you in."

"Thank you." Jared was looking back as heartfelt as Jensen had ever seen him. "I won't let you down."

"I know you won't," Jensen said quietly. All he wanted to do was wrap Jared up in his arms and lay him down on the bed and hold him as close as he could for the entire night.

Instead, he squeezed Jared's wrist once before letting go.


	18. Book 3 (San Francisco), Chapter 6

Jensen made him park a full two blocks away, the length of the whole downtown. Jared killed the lights and slumped down in the seat so any passersby at one in the morning in the little town of Jeremiah would think he was catching a few winks before driving on down the state highway. He watched as Jensen slipped behind the nearest building to walk down the alley all the way to the police station. Jensen had insisted that two people would look more suspicious than one, and it hadn't taken long to convince Jared that he was right despite Jared's niggling fear that he was being sidelined. 

He waited with equal parts nerves and boredom, startling every time the streetlight over the police station gave a weak flicker. There was a rustling sound outside, and Jared raised his eyebrows when he saw it was an honest-to-God tumbleweed rolling down the deserted street. A dog barked once, and a single car drove by. He closed his eyes, the better to play the part of the responsible driver taking a nap instead of driving while tired.

When the passenger side door opened, he jerked upright, hands flailing.

"Hey, take it easy," came Jensen's low voice. He slid into the car, dropping a duffle bag at his feet. "Let's go."

"You got it?" Jared asked, looking down at the bag.

"I'll show you later," Jensen said. His eyes gleamed in the streetlight from outside the car. "But yeah, I got it."

Jared closed his eyes and let out a slow breath. For the first time since coming to in the Sydney hospital, he could believe that maybe things were going to be okay.

At least, if he got the two of them out of Arizona in one piece. Turning the car on, he carefully checked for traffic before pulling out of the parking space and easing down the street under the speed limit. Normally, he was used to going at least ten miles over—he'd spent years in LA, after all—but the last thing they needed right now was any kind of attention from the police. It was nerve-wracking making the drive back to Cottonwood at the legal speed when all Jared wanted was to floor it, but he kept a careful pace and didn't relax until they were pulling up at the airport hangar.

Jensen had called ahead to warn the pilot, and as soon as they had parked and boarded the plane, they were taxiing to take off. There was no reason to think the gun's theft would be discovered until morning, but the farther away they were by then, the better.

"It's going to be a roundabout route home, gentlemen," the pilot shouted over his shoulder as they taxied onto the runway. "Gotta throw them off your trail."

Jared sighed and slumped against the seat. He was across the tiny aisle from Jensen, the duffle bag with its precious cargo strapped in the back. "Just let us know what to do," he called back, and the pilot gave a salute and turned toward the controls.

An hour later, they were flying low over the spill of light that Jared recognized as Las Vegas. He poked Jensen, who'd been napping against the window, before pointing down at the flashing neon of The Strip. They came in for a smooth landing—there wasn't much air traffic at 3 A.M.—and taxied to a small hangar.

"It's ground travel for the next leg," the pilot said once the plane was parked. "Good luck."

Jared realized the man had no idea who they were or what they were carrying, just that it was something Ravenswood needed done. "Thanks," he said, following Jensen out into the neon-lit night.

Their ride was an SUV with bench seats, large enough for Jared to get his torso flat if he bent his knees, propped his feet up on the seats, and didn't give a crap about a seatbelt. He was asleep within minutes, the dull thrum of road noise almost soothing compared to the roar of the Cessna's engines.

This time, it was Jensen who woke him up. "C'mon, Jay," he said. "Another plane."

Jared sat up and blinked. They were at another hangar, nothing but flat land visible all around in the faint glow from the eastern horizon. "Where are we?"

"Bakersfield." Jensen grabbed the duffel and slid out of the car. "It's a pain-in-the-ass way to travel, but lots of short legs make us harder to trace. By the time Tennyson can track us down, the gun will be in Australia and we'll be back home."

Rubbing his eyes, Jared followed him to another small plane. They strapped in next to each other this time, and Jared let his head fall onto Jensen's shoulder. He didn't quite sleep, but the faint scent of Jensen's sweat was a familiar, comforting sensation as they took off and flew north.

They landed in Redding and were loaded into another black SUV, this time driven by Terry. "Morning," he said with a nod.

Jared couldn't help but grin at the familiar face. They were almost home. "Good to see you."

"I hear things went well," was Terry's response.

Jensen held up the duffle bag, and Terry gave another nod. "It's a couple of hours to San Francisco. Feel free to sleep if you need it."

Jensen took him at his word, slumping down in the passenger seat as soon as they were on the interstate. Jared tried to follow suit, but he was too keyed up. What was going to happen now, he wondered? They had the gun, but was that going to be enough? Was Mick going to be happy with his demand having been met, or was he going to keep asking for more from them as the price for his group's silence about Jared's identity?

Jared knew there was nothing he could do to answer those questions but wait. Jensen had called Alex as soon as they'd left Jeremiah, so he knew the wheels were already being put in motion. Whether it meant another trip to Australia, or waiting for Mick and his cronies to come to them, he could handle it. They'd done all they could do, at least for now.

Not that it made the waiting any easier.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jensen woke up as the SUV pulled into the garage under Ravenswood's building. Stretching in the seat, he looked over his shoulder to see Jared giving him a small smile. He returned it, glad that they seemed to be on more even footing again. Whatever was next with regard to the Colt, it would be a lot easier with the two of them side-by-side.

In the elevator on the way up to Alex's office, Jensen leaned close enough that his hand brushed Jared's. Their fingers intertwined for just a moment, but the simple contact was as reassuring as holding a slumbering Jared on the last plane flight had been. Jensen drew in a deep breath and hefted the duffle bag higher on his shoulder. He was ready.

Alex opened the door as soon as they approached his office. "We'll be fine," he said to Terry, shutting the door again behind Jensen and Jared. It was a reminder of how very few people knew the full story of what was going on, even here among the upper echelons of Ravenswood.

"Did you contact them?" Jared asked as soon as he sat down.

Alex nodded, his face darkening. "They said they needed to see a live image of you with the gun before they were willing to talk."

"So when are we sending it?" Jensen asked. There would be ways to track the electronic transmission, although at this point, determining where the Australians were wasn't as relevant as getting the Colt into their hands. 

"As soon as they call." Alex gestured at the clock on the wall. "They wouldn't give us a contact number, just said they would call back based on your ETA from Arizona."

Jared's left leg was bouncing up and down. "So any minute now?"

"Within half an hour," Alex said apologetically. He nodded at the bag on Jensen's lap. "Is that it?"

Nodding, Jensen zipped open the bag. He'd shown it to Jared on the first flight, but after that it had been safely tucked away inside the gun box from Elkins' cabin in Colorado. The evidence box was still sitting in its locker in Jeremiah, hopefully delaying the chief of police's discovery that the gun was missing. Carefully, he took out the gun and laid it down on Alex's desk.

Alex gave a low whistle. "That is a remarkable piece."

Jensen watched as he picked it up and turned it over. "Careful," he said, although the sharp look Alex gave him over the top of his glasses suggested he had already seen the lone bullet in the cylinder.

"Non timebo mala," Alex read off the gun's barrel.

"I will fear no evil," Jensen said softly. The gun looked like it was old enough to have been made in the nineteenth century, when a Bible verse carved on a weapon would have been less incongruent than it looked today. The elegant lettering on the barrel was a sharp contrast to the crudely cut pentagram on the grip, suggesting that the latter was of special importance to either the gunmaker or a subsequent owner.

"Why do you suppose they want it?" Jared asked. His gaze was fixed on the Colt as Alex turned it over in his hands. "It's just a gun."

"Who knows." Alex set the weapon back down. "People want all sorts of things for no apparent reason. If we knew why, it might help us predict their moves better, but at this point, it's pretty clear what they want anyway."

Just then, there was a chime from Alex's computer. He looked at the screen and his mouth twisted in a frown. "Here we go." 

Jensen was already out of his seat before Alex could motion to him, and Jared wasn't far behind. They crowded around behind the high-backed office chair and watched as a video channel flickered to life. The picture was grainy as Alex tapped a key to make it fill the screen, but it was unmistakably the man Jensen had faced across a conference room table in Sydney, and his gut twisted in recognition.

Beside him, Jared stiffened, the knuckles of the hand gripping the top of Alex's chair going white. Jensen grimaced as he realized this was the first time Jared would have seen his former captor since his torture. Without looking away from the screen, he put a hand on Jared's back, low enough that it wouldn't be seen by the webcam perched over Alex's monitor. It wasn't as effective at calming Jared as it had been in the police office in Jeremiah, but he did feel a slight loosening of Jared's muscles beneath his fingertips, and he relaxed a fraction himself.

"I see you two made it back," Mick started. His face was so close to the camera that there wasn't much visible behind him, just a blank white wall in the very corners of the image. "I assume you were successful?"

"We got what you asked for," Jared bit out.

Mick's eyes flickered up to him and then to Alex. "Let's see it."

Alex reached over and picked up the gun, holding it first so that the whole object was visible and then moving it closer to the webcam to show first the engraved barrel and then the hand-cut symbol on the grip. "Let's see what you've got," he said with steel in his voice before putting the gun back down.

In reply, Mick tapped his temple. "All up here. Still just the three of us who know that information you'd rather not get out. Plus our backup man."

"How do we know that's true?" Jared snapped.

"Guess you'll just have to trust me," Mick replied. He tilted his head to the side. "You're looking quite well, Sam."

"Shut the fuck up," Jensen growled. This time, it was Jared putting a steadying hand on _his_ back, but he hardly noticed, too busy quelling the sudden rage that had swelled up inside of him. "Where do you want to meet?"

"No time for pleasantries, I see," Mick returned. "Fine. We'll be in the States in two days. We'll contact you again with more information. I expect to see the two of you—" he looked first at Jensen and then at Jared— "and absolutely no one else within a mile of the meeting location."

"What happens once you have the gun?" Jared asked. His jaw was clenched, his features giving no indication of what he thought about having to face these people again, even in a more equal setting. For a second, Jensen saw Sam's set jaw and careful blankness on Jared's face.

Mick waved a hand in the air. "We'll forget we ever heard of you. That's all."

"It better be all," Jensen muttered.

"We'll keep our word," Mick shot back. "See that you do, too. We'll see you in a few days." Then the screen went blank.

Alex instantly lifted the phone to his ear. "Anything?" 

Jensen could hear the voice on the other end start to explain that the transmission had been bounced off multiple IP addresses in multiple countries and that it would take a while. He grabbed Jared's hand and tugged him over to the edge of Alex's desk. "You okay?" he asked quietly.

"Fine," Jared replied. He was looking down at the plush maroon carpet, expression hidden behind his bangs, fingers loose in Jensen's grasp. "Where do you think they'll want to meet?"

"Who knows?" Jensen stepped closer until their chests were nearly touching. "I can go by myself, or Alex can come along. There's no reason why you should have to see them again."

"Yes, there is." Jared lifted his head, his expression fierce. "I want to punch their goddamn lights out."

"Hey now, that's my job," Jensen replied with a pointed look, eyebrows raised. At Jared's huff of breath, he relaxed his features and squeezed Jared's hand. In a lower voice, he went on, "I know that you want to prove something. But you don't have to. Not to me. Not to them."

"I know that." Jared's gaze cut away. "Maybe I do, though. To me."

Jensen drew breath to reply when Alex hung up the phone with a clatter. "Goddamnit it," Alex muttered.

Jared turned around, his hand slipping from Jensen's. "What's wrong?"

"They might look like rubes from the bush, but they know their tech." Alex shook his head. "They managed to erase any trace of their guy's prosthetic leg from the system, and now it'll take our people enough time to trace it that the bastards will already be on their way here by then."

"Can't you still learn something about where they were broadcasting from?" Jared asked.

"I doubt they were at home," Alex said dryly. He shifted upright in his seat. "Jay, I know what they said, but we can work something else out. You don't have to be there."

"I'll be fine." Jared all but rolled his eyes. "They're not going to hurt me, not when we've got what they want. Not when Jen's going to be there with me."

"Damn straight," Jensen muttered, pleased at the vote of confidence. Jared shot him a sideways half-grin that lifted his spirits even further. They had a couple of days to figure this out. It was going to be fine.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It was late when they got back to their hotel room. Jensen had insisted on waiting around until it was certain that they weren't going to hear back from the people in Washington who were trying to reconstruct Sam's journal. Jared had forgotten about that—had forgotten about Sam and everything they might have learned about him in Arizona, thrilled and nervous as he was to have the Colt in their hands. They weren't out of the woods yet, but he was hopeful that even with the restriction that only he and Jensen be present, they could pull this off.

It hadn't escaped his notice, though, that when Alex asked if everything had gone well getting the gun, Jensen had replied as brusquely as possible. In particular, he hadn't said a word about Sam, about the possibility that it had been his finger on the trigger of that murder weapon. In one sense, Jared supposed it didn't matter—if Sam had committed that crime for some unknown reason, he was dead and justice was not to be served. To be sure, Chief Tennyson and the rest of the community of Jeremiah would probably like to know what had happened, but Jared knew that offering up Sam's name at this point would only bring more questions, not answers. 

And if it wasn't Sam, which Jared wanted to believe with all of his heart that it wasn't, there was no use in bringing it up. Not when the very thought raised all of Jensen's hackles, not when it might well be besmirching a dead man's name for no good reason. The mystery of Daniel Elkins's and Anthony Alonzo's deaths might forever remain unsolved, and at this point in time, Jared was okay with that. All he cared about was getting that gun into his former captors' hands and getting back to the life he had with Jensen.

"You want the first shower?" Jensen asked, dropping his suit jacket on the armchair nearest the door.

Jared was suddenly aware that with the overnight travel, they'd completely missed not only a night of sleep, but showering, teeth brushing, and shaving. "Uh, yeah," he said, resisting the urge to feel how greasy his hair was. "You sure?"

"Yeah, no problem." Jensen had a small pile of file folders with him, and he dropped them onto the table in the front room of the suite. 

The words to ask Jensen to join him were on the tip of Jared's tongue, but he turned away. They hadn't done more than kiss and fall asleep leaning on each other since Sydney, and he wasn't sure that diving into the deep end was the way to go at this point.

He took his time showering, enjoying the hard pulse of the showerhead and the capacious hotel shower. Soaping up his arms, he noted that the abrasions on his wrists were almost gone. At least, objectively, the doctor in him could see that they were getting better, though they looked like neon red signs as far as Jared was concerned, marks of his failure to do the one simple thing he was supposed to do—pretend to be someone else. The taser marks had faded even more. Maybe he'd start sleeping without a shirt again, at least once he had Jensen's warmth next to him.

He shaved and brushed his teeth, pulling on the clothes he'd brought into the bathroom with him before going back out into the suite. "Shower's yours," he called out.

"Thanks," came a faint reply.

Jared climbed into bed and absently flicked through channels on the TV. He was already sleepy by the time Jensen made his way to the bathroom, but he yawned and turned the volume up louder, determined to stay awake. They still hadn't had their talk, and he wasn't falling asleep again without Jensen beside him. 

But he did fall asleep, because he jerked awake at a sudden silence. Jensen was carefully setting the remote on the bedside table, having apparently pulled it out of Jared's sleep-relaxed hand. "Shh," Jensen said when he saw Jared's eyelids cracking open. "It's all right, Jay. Go back to sleep."

"Nuh uh," he muttered, squeezing his eyes shut before opening them, feeling completely discombobulated from having woken so suddenly. "Not without you."

When he managed to focus on Jensen's face, he saw a fond expression there that he hadn't seen in quite a while. "You sure?" Jensen asked.

"Course." Jared scooted back in the bed, lifting up the covers. "C'mon."

Jensen hesitated. "Lemme turn the lights off first."

"Okay." Jared yawned and set his head back down on the pillow. They still needed to talk, but maybe right now wasn't the best time. They had a couple of days with nothing but waiting ahead of them, and it would be better if they had everything straightened out between them before meeting with the Australians. They could talk about it all in the morning.

He barely registered Jensen's weight sinking down into the bed, but he blindly reached out to put an arm around Jensen's middle and tug him close. "Night," he muttered into Jensen's shoulder.

Jared thought he felt a kiss to the top of his head, but he wasn't sure. The "night, Jared," that was murmured in his ear was clear and distinct, and he fell asleep to the calming feel of Jensen's fingers stroking though his hair.


	19. Book 4 (California), Chapter 1

Two days later, Jensen was about to start climbing the walls. They hadn't had any word from Mick and his crew, and while they still had a couple of weeks before the December 20 deadline, unexplained delays made him nervous. 

He could only imagine what it was doing to Jared. With nothing to do but wait, and nowhere to go without Ravenswood's protection hovering a few steps behind them, they had taken to hiding out in their hotel room, watching TV in separate rooms of the suite. That first night sleeping beside Jared again had been good—really, it had been great—but it hadn't been the solution to everything. Jensen still felt like Jared was distancing himself. He couldn't tell if it was because Jared blamed himself for what he saw as his failure in Sydney, if he was mad at Jensen for getting him into this mess even if he wouldn't admit it, or if it was something else entirely. Whatever it was, he wished Jared would talk to him about it.

"How're you doing?" Jensen asked, muting the TV as Jared came back from his workout in the hotel gym.

"Okay," Jared replied, toweling off his sweaty hair. "Gonna shower now."

He looked downright delectable in his tight grey t-shirt and basketball shorts, legs and forearms outlined in a sheen of sweat. Jensen didn't think it was his imagination that Jared had been working out more than before, not only the runs he used to take along the beach that were now being done on a treadmill, but lifting weights, too. Maybe it was something to keep him busy and burn off some energy. Jensen sure didn't mind the results.

He thought for a moment about asking Jared if he wanted company, but Jared had already turned toward the bathroom. At least they were sharing the same bed again, Jensen thought. Jared still didn't seem comfortable showing off his body, and even if the marks on his torso were probably as faded as the ones on his wrists, Jensen didn't want to push it. Considering what Jared had been through, he wasn't going to get over it in a matter of weeks. Giving him as much room as he could while still making it clear that he was here if Jared needed him was a hard balancing act, but Jensen was willing to take it on.

The shower started up, and Jensen turned the sound back on. It was a sports show that he was only half paying attention to. He remembered that he had been a huge basketball and football fan before his memory went, but that it all seemed like a waste of time once Sam was gone. He'd followed sports news a little when they were in their cottage in Morro Bay, but since he didn't recognize most of the players' names, it was another reminder of how much he'd missed of the regular world. And now, it seemed like such a silly thing to worry about.

The shower stopped running after only a few minutes, and it wasn't much longer before Jared came out in jeans and a red-and-white plaid shirt, the wet ends of his hair soaking the fabric. "What're you watching?" he asked.

Jensen looked at the screen and realized he had no idea what the announcers were talking about. "Nothing," he said, clicking off the TV. "You wanna go somewhere?"

"Where?" Jared folded his arms over his chest. "You think they're gonna let us stroll around San Francisco all of a sudden?"

Jensen rubbed his hand over his jaw. "Maybe not, but I'm goin' a little stir-crazy here, and I know you are, too. We could head into the office and see if they've heard anything."

"Alex would have called if they did."

"Well, if we were there, we would save him the time of calling." Jensen held up his hands. "Look, I know you're getting nervous. I am, too. But as soon as they call, we're gonna use all of the resources we have to scope out the site. There'll be a team ready to start planning out where we're going to place our backup."

Jared stared at him. "We don't have any backup. We have us. That's it. Any more people and they aren't going to deal. That's what they said on the phone."

"Yeah, and that's what they said last time," Jensen growled. "And there is no fucking way I'm making that mistake again."

"We don't have a choice." Jared put his hands on his hips. "If they decide that we haven't done what they asked, they're going to make it public that I'm alive. That's my life on the line. Mine, and yours, and probably my sister's, too. I'm not taking any risks I don't have to."

"Listen, we know what we're doing. They're not going to see anyone besides you and me, I guarantee it." Jensen stood up, feeling like he needed to be at eye level with Jared to make sure he got the message. "But I am not letting you walk in anywhere alone."

"I won't be alone," Jared said. "You'll be there."

"And God only knows how many of them there'll be," Jensen said, spreading his arms wide. "They want this gun, and they want to get out of there in one piece. As long as we let them do that, it doesn't really matter if we follow all of their instructions to the T or not."

Jared shook his head mulishly. "I don't understand why you're so willing to take a risk like this," he said. "Maybe I don't have the experience that you do, but if anyone knows what these people really want and what they're really like, it's me. I might not know anything about all this stuff compared to you and to Alex, but I don't think they're kidding around. I think they're serious."

"No shit. If they weren't serious, they wouldn’t have…" Jensen gestured at Jared and then dropped his arms to his side. "Never mind."

"You can say it, Jensen. They wouldn't have tortured me." Jared's chin was lifted, his gaze defiant, but Jensen could see the vulnerability behind his eyes. It was costing him something to admit what had happened to him, and Jensen hated that their argument had brought that upon him when they hadn't gotten to talking it out.

He carefully put a hand on Jared's arm. "You know I'm not going to let you out of my sight again," he said. "Nothing's going to happen to you."

"As long as we do what they say," Jared said stubbornly. 

Jensen grimaced. "We'll talk it over with Alex, okay? It's not like Mick isn't going to have more people hidden away than he admits to bringing with him. That's one of the strategies everyone uses. And yeah, he'll be pissed about the gun being considered hot, but that's hardly our fault."

He knew the conversation wasn't over, only postponed, and the stubborn set to Jared's mouth said he knew it, too. But he gave a short nod and said, "Why don't we go in, then? We can start talking it over."

"Yeah, sure." With Alex on his side, he could talk Jared out of this "going it alone" idea. He understood the need to follow instructions—there was a lot at stake, and Jared really did have an idea of how far these people were willing to go. But Jensen also knew that agreements could be bent when there was a good reason, and this was one of those times. There was no way he was letting any of those men get near Jared without an arsenal on standby. 

No matter what Jared said.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

When they got to the office, Alex was busy in a meeting, so they were shown to a private conference room. It was larger than the room where Jared had studied how to be Sam Winchester, more modern with ergonomic chairs surrounding a polished wooden conference table. He watched Jensen pacing back and forth next to the bank of windows overlooking the Embarcadero, and he wondered for a moment what Jensen would be like if this was his daily routine instead: closing business deals, meeting in plush conference rooms, stressing out over money and business dealings instead of life-and-death matters. Somehow, he couldn't picture it at all.

After a few minutes, Liza entered the room. "How're you guys doing?" she asked.

"Fine," Jensen replied in a clipped tone that was clearly in contrast to his words.

Jared admired the way Liza took in Jensen's clearly false statement and didn't change her facial expression at all as a result. "All right. Alex wanted to let you know that the day's flights from Australia have all landed at SFO. So if your guys are flying in, they'll be here."

The nervous twinge in Jared's stomach was a reminder that he was going to have to see his captors face to face again, whether he was ready or not. "Do we know that's how they're getting here?"

She shook her head. "It's not like they forwarded us a travel itinerary, you know?" When he nodded heavily, she gave him a weak smile. "We should hear something soon."

She left them alone, and Jared watched Jensen continue to pace. "You're making me dizzy," he said.

"Sorry." Jensen ran a hand over his mouth and jaw. "I used to be the one who was good at this part. Sam always wanted to be _doing_ something, even if it was doing research or making plans. Anything was better than sitting still. This kind of thing would drive him nuts."

"D'you think you picked that up from him?" Jared asked carefully. 

"I don't know." Jensen paused to look out the window. "Maybe it's more that when I became Dean Winchester, there was always something to do, always a plan to make or a skill to learn or something else to try and distract myself from the real reason I was doing all of it."

"Revenge," Jared said quietly. It still took his breath away sometimes, the devotion that Jensen had shown to Sam by putting his entire life in upheaval to try and take down the man responsible for Sam's death. He knew that Jensen loved him now, even if it had taken a horrific experience for him to be able to express it, but sometimes he wondered if it even came close to what Jensen had felt for Sam.

"Yeah." Jensen turned around to face Jared. "This is completely different, though. You should know that."

Jared sighed and looked down at his hands, folded in his lap. "Yeah, I know," he said quietly.

Jensen was drawing breath to reply when there was a knock at the door. "What?" he called out in exasperation.

It was Alex who poked his head inside. "Something's happened that you need to know about."

"Did the Australians call?" Jensen asked.

"Not exactly." Alex came inside and shut the door behind him. "This hasn't made it to the national news yet, but it will soon. There was a major explosion at the Town Hall in Jeremiah, AZ. The official story is a gas leak, but I think we both know how unlikely that is."

Jared drew in a sharp breath. "Was anyone hurt?"

Alex fiddled with the edge of the file folder he was holding. "The sheriff was inside the building at the time, as was his secretary. Two bodies were found, and though they haven't been able to verify the remains yet, it's pretty likely it was them."

"Shit." Jensen rubbed his hand over his mouth and looked at Jared. "Those fuckers are really covering their tracks, aren't they?" He looked over at Alex, and Jared could practically see the gears turning in his head. "I don't care what they said about the meet, we're not going in there on our own. Not if they might pull something like this on us."

Jared frowned. "You think the Australians did this?"

"You don't?" Alex was leaning against the wall next to the door, head cocked to the side as he studied Jared.

He swallowed, realizing that he was out of his depth compared to the people around him, but plowing ahead anyway. "It doesn't make sense," he said, talking through his thoughts. "Look, we still don't know how they managed to find out about Sam and the Colt in the first place, but the fact that they're using a highly secretive organization like Ravenswood to get it suggests they're trying to keep under the radar, right?" The two men nodded, and Jared went on, "So why do something that's going to get national news coverage when they don't have to?"

"Covering their tracks," Jensen repeated. "If word gets out that this gun was stolen from Jeremiah, if the sheriff had reported it missing, it becomes a hot property that's a lot harder to move around with. This way, no one knows where it came from or who had their hands on it before we did."

"Yeah, but—"

"We still don't know why they want it." Jensen punctuated his words with a raised finger. "Part of that reason might be to keep it a secret that they _do_ have it. Which would mean eliminating all of the steps along the way."

Jared felt a shiver down his spine. "Including us." 

"Exactly." Jensen pointed his finger at Jared. "Now you get it. I'm not letting you go out there alone."

"I still don't think that makes sense. They're not even here yet."

"We don't know that," Jensen returned. "They might have gotten in yesterday. Hell, they might have been here this whole time, waiting for us to lead them to whoever had the gun."

"Then why not follow us to Arizona and take it from us on sight?" Jared asked. "Why go through the trouble of setting up a new meeting if they could have just taken it away from us then?"

"I'm inclined to agree with Jay," Alex said. "It doesn't make a lot of sense."

"What's the alternative?" Jensen asked. "That another party showed up out of nowhere? This gun has been buried in a small-town evidence locker for years. The odds that two different groups of people started to go after it at the same time are a little too high for me."

"We found it because it was recently added to the state database," Alex reminded him. "Maybe another group has been looking for it and came across it the same way."

Jensen shook his head impatiently. "Even if that were the case, it's all the more reason to have backup. If there's another group out there that's willing to kill for it, we need to make sure we're protected." 

"What if Mick decides we're not doing what they want?" Jared leaned forward, forearms on his thighs, and looked Jensen in the eye. "What if they decide we broke the deal by bringing more than the two of us and decide to tell people who I really am?"

"We'll make it really clear to them just how bad an idea that is." The steel in Jensen's voice would have been reassuring to Jared on another occasion, but right now it made him sound stubborn and full of bravado.

Jared held his gaze for only a moment before looking away. "Fine, do what you want to do."

"Jay, I'm not—"

Jensen was cut off by a knock on the door. When Alex opened it, Liza was in the doorway with a manila envelope in her hand. "This was left at the front desk twenty minutes ago," she said. "The courier was paid in cash by a man who fits Mick's description approximately half an hour before that. From where the transaction took place, we were able to draw on traffic cameras, but he got out of range within a couple of blocks."

Alex sighed and took the envelope from her. "Thank you, Liza. It would have been nice to know where he was going, but I suppose we'll find out anyway, right?"

"Placerville." She nodded at the folder. "I hope you don't mind, but I thought it was best to start recon right away."

The corners of his blue eyes creased as he smiled, not all that differently from Jensen's. "Good call," Alex said. "We'll be out in a few minutes to see what you've got."

Liza nodded brusquely and turned around, her blonde ponytail whipping out behind her.

Alex had already opened the folder and was flipping through the four or five papers inside of it. "Placerville, California. It's east of Sacramento in the foothills of the Sierras. There's a little airstrip there, and that's where Mick wants to meet." He held up a hand-written note. "Tomorrow night at seven, no one but you two and nothing but the gun."

"What's the situation?" Jensen asked. "Any obvious places to put our people?"

Alex snorted. "The airstrip is along a the backbone of a ridge. Looks like there's no higher ground within range of anything but the longest-distance rifle. There's one road in, and it's within full view of the runway. He picked the spot for a reason." He held up the pieces of paper. "And he wanted to make sure we knew it." 

Jared could see maps in Alex's hand, a printout of a Google Maps screen and another with the brown lines of a topographic map that would have quickly told Alex what the terrain looked like. "So we're going to have to do what he said after all."

"We'll figure something out." Jensen looked like he was itching to get his fingers on those maps. "We've got plenty of time."

Thirty hours didn't seem like plenty of time to Jared, but it was another reminder that he was out of his depth in comparison to everyone else here. "Sure, yeah," he said. He stood up and said to Alex, "Where should we go?"

Alex was looking back and forth between them with that knowing look that meant he was aware of Jared's discomfort but wasn't going to say anything about it. "We'll bring everyone in here," he said. "There's plenty of room."

"All right, then let's get going." Jensen was already spreading the maps out on the table, and Jared moved to hover over his shoulder as if there was anything he could do to help.

Funny that now that Jensen had gotten his wish and had plenty to keep himself occupied, Jared was the one who could only stand around and wait.


	20. Book 4 (California), Chapter 2

The next morning, Jensen was downing multiple cups of coffee before Jared was even up. He was embarrassed to admit he hadn't noticed when Jared left the office last night—at one point he had looked around, and before he could say anything, Alex said, "Jay asked to be escorted back to the hotel about half an hour ago."

Jensen had felt awful about it, but then Terry had tapped him on the arm with a question about the possibility of sending a team up to Placerville tonight to get situated in advance, and he'd gotten lost in the logistics of that. By the time Alex forced him to leave, it was after one in the morning.

Even then, Jensen didn't sleep. He'd stayed up for another couple of hours thinking of backup plans and ways this could go wrong, trying to think of everything possible to make sure that what happened in Sydney didn't happen again. It was somewhere around 3:30 when he crawled into bed beside a softly snoring Jared.

The sun peeking in through a crack between the curtains had awaked him before seven, and he'd used the time to review his late-night thoughts and see if any of them made sense. He was on the phone with Alex when Jared emerged from the bedroom, looking better rested than Jensen would have expected. _At least one of us could get some sleep,_ he thought.

"Can you tell me what's going on?" Jared asked.

"Yeah, just a minute." Jensen held up a finger and responded to Alex's question about how they were going to drive up there. When he looked up, Jared was gone and the shower was on.

Jensen sighed and slumped back on the couch. "Alex, I gotta go. We'll be in shortly."

He hung up and went in search of Jared. Tapping on the bathroom door, he called out, "Can I come in?"

There was a pause, and then, "Yeah, sure."

Jensen entered to find the room clouded with steam. The shower was running, Jared's shape barely visible behind the pebbled glass door. Jensen wanted badly to push that door aside and drink in his fill, but he held back. "Alex says they're pretty much ready," he said instead. "I'll shower after you're done, and then we can go in, okay?"

"Yeah, sure. Just give me a minute."

"No rush." Jensen hesitated, then went back into the bedroom, being sure to audibly close the door behind him. 

Once things were settled tonight, once they had gotten rid of the gun and gotten the promise that Jared's identity was safe, he and Jared were going to sit down and have a long talk. Maybe before they went back home to Morro Bay, assuming that was where they were headed. Jared was still on medical leave from his clinic job, but given the way Jensen had abruptly canceled his teaching duties due to Jared's attack, he wasn't sure there was going to be a place for him at the college. Still, the thought of returning to their cottage on the hill was enough to put a small smile on his face and give him hope that they would get past this. 

Once Jared was out, Jensen quickly showered and shaved. He came out to find Jared on the couch, clicking through channels on the television with an expression that indicated he wasn't paying a bit of attention. "Ready to go?" Jensen asked.

Jared hit the off button and tossed the remote onto the coffee table with a clatter. "Not until you tell me where and when."

"Yeah, I can do that on the way," Jensen said, patting his pockets to make sure he had the hotel room key.

"No."

He looked up at the sharp tone of Jared's voice. "What?"

"Tell me now. Before we leave. Before you get so distracted by everyone else that you forget I'm even there."

Jensen let out a sigh, hand coming up to the back of his neck. "Jay, I'm sorry about that. I really am. It was probably better that you came back here and slept anyway. Tonight's likely to be a long night no matter what happens."

Jared rose to his feet, drawing himself up and taking advantage of the few inches he had on Jensen, like he rarely did. "I want to know what the plan is. I want to know what we're going to do to make sure we meet their demands without anyone getting hurt or anything going wrong, and that I get my life back. Such as it is," he added under his breath.

Jensen stared at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that even if I'm the one whose life is at stake here, I feel like I'm completely irrelevant. I got swept aside yesterday and told to go wait in the corner until other people figured out what to do with me. Now, I understand that I fucked it all up last time, and maybe it's fair that I be left out of the loop." Jared's eyes were bright, and his next inhalation wasn't entirely steady. "I just wish someone would tell me that so I know what I'm supposed to do."

"Jay." Jensen lifted a hand and then stopped, stunned. "That's not it at all. Any of it. I don't—I never thought you fucked anything up. You _know_ that. And I sure as hell am not deliberately leaving you out of the loop."

Jared gestured at the papers littered over the coffee table, Jensen's scratches and scribblings from the night before. "You didn't even notice that I left last night. And once you got back here, you didn't even try to see if I was still up. You just sat down and kept working. Don't get me wrong, I know that you know what you're doing." He swallowed hard. "And I'm willing to go along with whatever it is. I just wish I wasn't going to be the last one to find out about it."

"You're not," Jensen said, and this time he did reach out and put a hand on Jared's bicep. "Not at all. We're on our way to the office to finalize things, but then you and I are going to sit down and go over every detail to make sure there's nothing we left out. If you think there's anything we haven't thought through, anything that might go wrong, you let me know. You were right yesterday when you said you know them better than anyone else." He rubbed Jared's arm. "But you needed the sleep."

"That's it?" Jared asked with raised eyebrows. "You thought I needed the sleep?"

Jensen nodded. "I didn't mean to leave you out on purpose, I swear. None of us did. You're half of this operation, and I need you to be completely part of it."

There was silence for a moment. Then Jared let out a breath, his shoulders slumping slightly. "Yeah, okay." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm sorry for overreacting."

"No, it's okay." Jensen tugged a little on Jared's arm, and to his relief, Jared moved forward into an embrace. "It's all right," Jensen said, arms coming up to hold Jared. "It's gonna be all right." 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jared was ashamed of his outburst as soon as he realized that Jensen had taken his words to heart and worked out a plan that involved only the two of them onsite. They would both be wearing earpieces to remain in constant contact with a team that would be waiting about a mile away on a side road that skirted the airport property. The written instructions that had come with the map said only to bring the gun and nothing else, so that was what they were going to do.

Jensen was checking the clip on a Beretta as everyone else finally filed out of the room, leaving the two of them alone. "You want one?" he asked, holding up the gun.

Jared thought about it for a moment, about the reassurance it would provide him. It hadn't made a bit of difference in Australia, quick as his kidnappers had been, but here it would at least make him feel better. He nodded slowly. "Yeah, I think I would."

Jensen's eyebrows shot up. "You sure?"

"You know I've been taking lessons since we moved to California," Jared said. "And it's not like I didn't know how to use a gun before anyway."

Jensen's mouth twisted, and Jared wondered if they were remembering the same thing: Jared holding Jensen's gun on him that first morning he woke up in Oranienberg after saving Jared's life, thinking he was an assassin named Dean Winchester. "Yeah, I guess you do." Jensen put his gun down on the table. "If you want it, that's fine."

"You don't think it's a good idea," Jared said, reading between the lines.

"No, it's all right." Jensen sighed and pushed the gun closer to him. "Go ahead and take this one. I'll get another from downstairs." 

He watched Jensen go and resisted to yell after him that he didn't need the damn gun anyway. Instead, he picked up the Beretta and looked it over, familiarizing himself with the feel of it and checking the magazine even though he'd just seen Jensen do the same thing.

The drive east was mostly made in silence. Jensen was driving the big SUV, Jared in shotgun. There were two other vehicles on the road with them, and one had gone up earlier to scope out the site in case there was anything their aerial imagery hadn't uncovered. Jared napped, or at least tried to, but his nerves were growing with every mile. He finally sat up and asked, "Are we there yet?"

"Just about," Jensen replied. "How're you doing?"

"All right." He ran his hands through his hair and tried to shake off the doze that he'd fallen into on the drive. "Any updates since we left?"

"Not that I know of." Jensen gave him a quick look, his gaze unreadable in the darkened car. "You know you can change your mind. I can handle this myself."

Jared scoffed. "I think I can handle standing around for a few minutes."

"That's not what I mean." Jensen's hand landed heavily on Jared's thigh. "You don't have to see those bastards again if you don't want to."

"I'm fine." Jared tried to keep his voice level instead of rising in pitch like it was trying to do. Anything the two of them said could be heard back at Ravenswood HQ, after all. "Besides, they wanted us both to be there."

"All right." Jensen patted his leg and put his hand back on the wheel. "I just wanted you to know."

Jared didn't answer, afraid that he'd give away how his gut was churning if he said anything right now. He wasn't entirely sure he _could_ do this, but there was no way he was backing down. He had to show those bastards he was stronger than they thought he was. 

Maybe he felt like had to show Jensen that, too.

A few minutes later, Jensen slowed the car and turned onto a side road. Their trailing vehicles had dropped back far enough that they were no longer in sight, and Jared felt for the first time in a long time like the two of them were truly on their own. The headlights lit up a sign that read "Placerville Airport." As they headed up the narrow road, Jared felt at the pocket of his hoodie for the reassuring weight of the gun. 

The road wound up a hillside until it came out on the flat top of the ridge. Jared saw the long, flat expanse of a runway stretching out into darkness, a few shapes of hangars lining it on either side. "First one on the left," he reminded Jensen.

Jensen didn't respond, only turned the wheel and came to a stop before they reached the first hangar. "Two cars," he said, pointing to the vehicles parked on the far side of that same hanger. "One with a person in the driver's seat. One plane on the north end of the runway. No one else in sight."

Jared was about to say that he could see all of that very well, thank you, when he remembered he wasn't the only one who could hear Jensen. "Ready," he said instead.

Jensen gave him another long look, but all he said was, "Then let's go."

The wide hangar door was cracked open, enough that light was spilling out onto the tarmac. Jared walked side-by-side with Jensen, hands on their guns but not drawn, and they slipped past the door in unison.

The two people standing inside were all too familiar to Jared. For a second he felt the burn of rope digging into his wrists and remembered the fear of them standing behind him, taser raised and ready to use. He stuttered for a step but refused to let any more reaction show, either to Jensen or to them. He could do this. They couldn’t hurt him, not anymore.

"Mick," Jensen said, the slight growl in his voice reminiscent of his time as Dean Winchester.

"Glad you made it," the other man replied. He was standing in the middle of the hangar, gun clearly visible at his side in a holster. His partner Sue was about a dozen yards away, watching with that same careful expression Jared remembered from the Sydney basement, and he had to turn away. "Wish you wouldn't have put the jacks on us, though."

Jared had no idea what he was talking about, but Jensen said, "Thought that was you covering your tracks. Almost made us call this off."

"We didn't even land till yesterday," Mick said, spreading his arms wide. "How would we have blown up a police station in Arizona?"

"How did you know about Sam Winchester?" Jensen shot back.

"We have our sources. There's no way we'd want the kind of attention an explosion would bring right now." 

"Not like we do, either," Jensen replied. His knuckles were white where he was gripping the strap of his backpack, like he was barely restraining himself from lunging forward to attack. "Let's do this, all right? We've got what you want."

"Well, let's see it, then." The sharp tone of Mick's voice was making Jared remember all sorts of things he didn't want to about the last time he'd heard it. He gritted his teeth and stood his ground, ignoring the way the scar on his back was suddenly itching.

Moving slowly and keeping his motions clear, Jensen took the plain black backpack off his shoulder and put it down on the ground. "You want me to show it to you?"

"Leave it there and back off." Mick watched as they did as he asked, and only then did he move forward. He bent down and zipped open the backpack, and a smile stretched across his weathered face. "Look at you, beautiful." He pulled out the Colt and held it up to the light, turning it this way and that.

"Check the markings," Sue called out.

He looked closely at the grip and the barrel. "It's the real deal," he finally said. He stood up and tucked the gun back into the knapsack. "Thanks," Mick said, tipping the bill of his cap at Jared. "Pleasure doin' business with you."

Jared heard what sounded like a low growl in Jensen's throat, but he thought it would be better not to even dignify that with a response. So he kept his shoulders straight and looked Mick right in the eye without saying a word. Just a few minutes longer, he told himself. Then this would be over.

Mick had taken two steps backward when Jensen said, "Wait."

Mick paused, and Jared could feel the tension in the room ratcheting up. "Is there a problem?"

"We upheld our end of the bargain." Jensen gestured at the backpack. "Now you keep yours."

Mick shrugged. "I'm already forgetting I ever heard your boyfriend's name." 

"You have a phone call to make. To Paul." Jensen took a step forward, arms down at his sides, and for a moment, Jared saw him as a gunslinger, bowed legs taut with tension, arms ready to move.

"I'm not sure what you're talking about."

"Don't play dumb. When you came to our office in Sydney, you bragged about your safety valve in case you didn't call in on time. Don't tell me you didn't do the same thing here."

Jared held his breath, and a moment later, Mick gave a reluctant nod. "Once we're out of here free and clear, we will make that call."

"Not good enough." Jensen's hand twitched like he wanted to reach for a gun. "Make the call now, or you aren't getting out of here."

"Jen!" Jared hissed, but Jensen didn't move or even acknowledge that he'd heard him. What the fuck was he thinking?

Mick smirked. "If we don't get out of here, that call doesn't get made. And it won't be too long until your boy's name is plastered all over the news in headlines about his miraculous return from the dead."

"Jen," Jared said, more nervously now. 

"That won't do you much good if you're dead, now will it?" Jensen lowered his head, staring down Mick from under raised eyebrows. "And whatever is it that's got you all hot and bothered about that gun won't matter anymore, either."

There was silence for a moment. Then Sue spoke up. "Mick, make the call."

Mick pointed at Jensen. "Then he can double cross us."

"We won't." Jared stepped forward, arms folded across his chest, heart skipping a beat when Mick turned to look at him. "I promise you. You know that I'm not—that I'm just a civilian. All I want is to get out of this and go home with my secret intact. I'm not going to do anything to jeopardize that." He waited a beat and then added, "And you gotta know that you have far more reason to trust me in this than I have to trust you."

Jensen let out a huff of breath, but Jared's attention was focused solely on Mick. Finally, the older man took off his cap and ran his hand through his hair. "Shit. All right, we'll make the call, but from outside. I don't want to get ambushed as soon as I hang up."

"You won't," Jared promised, feeling Jensen's eyes boring into him from the side.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

They made their way back outside the hangar, Jensen hyper-aware like he couldn't remember being since he was Dean Winchester. The handoff had gone as well as he could have hoped, and even if it had been a risk to make this new demand at the last minute, it felt right. He had no way of knowing if these guys were trustworthy enough to keep up their end of the bargain, and even though he knew Jared would object, he had to give it a shot.

He wasn't prepared for Jared to offer the winning argument, but it was welcome nonetheless.

As soon as Mick was clear of the building, he pointed to his car. "The sat phone's in there."

"Then let's go get it," Jensen said.

The person Jensen had seen earlier in the driver's seat was standing beside the car, watching them approach. "Everything okay?" he asked as they neared.

"So far, so good," Mick said. He nodded sideways at Jensen. "They held up their end, so we're gonna phone home and let 'em know to keep a lid on things."

"Sounds good." The guy stepped away from the car and nodded toward the line of trees behind the nearest hangar. "'M gonna take a piss."

"Be ready to go as soon as I'm done," Mick said. "It's a long drive from here."

He watched as Mick opened the car door and reached for the center console. Jensen could feel Jared standing close behind him, and he would have reached out in reassurance except that he was sure that Jared didn't want the insinuation that he needed help of any kind right now. He'd done so well, looking so strong while facing down the people who had tortured him without even blinking. Jensen couldn't wait to tell him how proud he was.

"Got the package," Mick was saying. "Cancel the call." He waited a moment and then said, "Yep, as we planned. Call you from the next checkpoint."

He clicked off the phone, and Jensen stared at him. "The next checkpoint?"

"It's a long way home," Mick said. "Just making sure that nothing happens along the way."

"We don't have any control over that," Jared said. "Once you leave here, it's not our fault if you don't make it the rest of the way."

"I get that." Mick put a hand on the roof of the car and nodded at Sue, who started to walk around the front of the car. "Doesn't mean I don't want to get home in one piece." He tossed the phone inside the car. "And we'd best get started on that."

Jensen's gaze automatically tracked the movement of the phone as Mick tossed it inside. Something caught his eye, and he frowned. "Strange place for an anti-theft system," he mused.

"What's that?" Mick asked sharply.

Jensen pointed. "Under the steering column. There's a—" His eyes widened as the light bulb went off in his head, and dread started to coil in his stomach. That wasn't an anti-theft system. It was something much, much worse. "Get away from the car. Everyone."

"Jen, what are you—"

"Right now!" He blindly reached back and grabbed Jared's arm, shoving him away from the car. "Mick, move it!"

"If you're trying to play some kind of game here—" 

On the other side of the car, Sue asked, "Mick, what is he talking about?"

"I have no idea, but I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't take that call back. Seems like you're trying to do something that breaks our deal." He put a hand on the door of the car and stepped back like he was going to slam it shut.

Jensen's gaze slid to the interior of the car door. To his horror, he saw the glint of a wire in a place there wouldn't normally be one, at the hinge of the door and disappearing up under the steering column. "Mick, no! Don't—"

He reached out to stop him, but Mick's arm was already moving. Jensen saw the door close as if in slow motion, heard the faint tick after the slam of the door.

He whirled around to throw himself at Jared as the only thing left he could do.

The explosion was deafening, instantly filling all of Jensen's senses. Even with his eyes closed and head turned away, the sudden flash seared through the darkness. The sound was overwhelming, overcoming his hearing in an instant. The smell of burning rubber and metal filled his nostrils and put a sharply unpleasant taste in his mouth.

But it was the flaring pain across his back and legs that swept everything else away. 

Jensen didn't even remember hitting Jared or falling to the ground on top of him, trying to cover as much of his big body as he could. He was consumed in the sharp agony that seared across his shoulders and thighs and shut down everything else as he fell into utter blackness.


	21. Book 4 (California), Chapter 3

The first thing that registered in Jared's consciousness was the heat. He was burning up, but for some reason he couldn't move. His head felt as heavy as a ton of bricks, and his body felt even heavier.

There was an incredibly familiar crackling sound, but Jared couldn't place it. He slowly came to the conclusion that he was going to have to open his eyes if he wanted to find out what was going on, but that seemed like a herculean effort. Especially when there was a horrible smell floating through the air. If he opened his eyes, he was probably going to see whatever was causing that smell, and it was probably something bad.

A clattering noise cut through his thoughts, and he managed to open one eye. His other eye wouldn't open, and he wondered if that had something to do with the way the world was going back and forth between light and darkness. 

Flames, his brain finally put together. Fire, shooting up into the night sky, flickering wildly in the light breeze. Why was there a fire? Where was he, and where was—?

The weight on top of him shifted, and there was another, nearer clatter. Jared craned his heavy, heavy neck to see what was happening. There was a blurry shape next to him, and as he inhaled, beneath the burning stench was another, more familiar scent. Jensen was on top of him, sprawled out and unmoving, and Jared let his head fall back down on the pavement. Jensen was here. It was going to be okay.

He heard a scraping sound, and he rolled his head to the side. Far away, nearer the heat of the fire, someone was bent over tugging at something heavy. Jared would have offered to help except that he couldn't even manage to move himself right now, and Jensen was on top of him anyway. Jensen would help, he was sure.

Wait, maybe this other person could help. Jared lifted his head again, looking past Jensen's shoulder and squinting to see anything. He saw the person pull something out of the dark shape on the ground and tuck it away in a pocket.

Then they pulled out something else and aimed it down at the shape, which was now stirring. Jared's muzzy brain was still trying to figure it out when the sharp report of a gun barked out over the roar of the fire.

A sudden chill ran down his spine despite the heat, clarity slicing through his brain with the sound of the gunshot. It was coming back to him now: the handoff in the hangar and Jensen's insistence that Mick call off his watchdog, Mick making the call and then Jensen noticing something and trying to get them all out of the way. All of them, but he'd thrown himself at Jared, and now he remembered hitting the ground with a thump, his head cracking back against the pavement.

The car must have exploded as he hit the ground, Jared thought. The sting of the wind on open cuts told him that there were scrapes on his face and hands. He had the bad feeling that his other eye wouldn’t open because of the blood trickling over it from the cut he could feel on his forehead.

Then it sank in. There had been a fucking _car bomb_ , and Mick had accidentally triggered it, and Jensen hadn't been able to stop him. But now there was someone walking around with a gun, and there should be Ravenswood people around here somewhere after the sound of that explosion, and shit, Jensen was going to be _pissed_ that someone had gotten past their protection.

He'd closed his eyes again to rest, and so it was the scrape of feet on the pavement that alerted him. Someone was standing right next to him. Someone who had just fired a gun into what he now realized must have been Mick's body, someone who had also pulled the Colt out of Mick's backpack before shooting him, someone who right now was probably pointing a gun at him and Jensen. 

The only thing Jared could do was hold his breath and keep his eyes closed and hope with everything he had that he looked like he was already dead.

Behind his closed eyelids, Jared could sense a shadow as the unknown person moved between him and the fire. Every instinct he had screamed at him to fight, to run, to flee, but he couldn't do anything. He prayed as hard as he could that Jensen didn't move again, because all it would take was the slightest indication they were still alive (oh God, assuming Jensen _was_ still alive), and the gun would be firing again. Hell, maybe they'd do it anyway just to be safe, and Jared resisted the urge to squeeze his eyes shut as if that would help. The gun in the pocket of his hoodie was digging into his stomach with Jensen's weight on him, but there was no way he could make a move for it right now.

There was a distant crunch of gravel, and then the footsteps scraped right by Jared's head before moving off. He made himself ease out his pent-up breath and not gasp in air, as much as his starved lungs wanted it. Whatever had made the gunman run off, they could just as easily turn around if they heard a sound. 

A moment later, a second kind of light filtered through Jared's eyelids, and he carefully opened his good eye. There were headlights cutting through the darkness, and he saw from the corner of his eye a black SUV racing down the taxiway toward them. He let out a sigh and closed his eyes, feebly lifting a hand to rest on Jensen's head. Help was here. Someone else could figure out what had happened, and Jared was going to take a nap now.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jensen awoke feeling like he had cotton in his head that was muffling everything, even his thoughts. He could hear a faint, steady beep, could feel a faint scratch against his cheek. He tried to lift his head to see what was going on, but it was really heavy. He seemed to be lying on his stomach, and there was a faint buzzing noise that permeated the entire room.

It sounded like someone was saying his name from very far off. He struggled to remember what had happened—there had been the airstrip, the hangar, the handoff with the gun, and then they had gone outside and—

He suddenly started to push himself up with his arms. "Jay," he called out, or tried to, because he could barely hear his own voice. "Jay!" he called louder.

There was a careful hand on his back, and then someone was leaning over him, murmuring in his ear. "He's all right," Alex said, and Jensen relaxed a fraction. "He's okay, Jon, but you need to rest."

"Talk louder," Jensen demanded.

Alex patted him on the back until he laid down again. He bent over Jensen and continued to speak so quietly Jensen could barely hear him. "Do you remember what happened?"

"Bomb," he said. Was there something wrong with his throat? Why could he barely hear himself? His throat felt sore and raspy; maybe that was it.

"That's right." Alex's hand moved back and forth between his shoulder blades. "You were very close to it, and your hearing is going to be off for a few days. That's why you're shouting right now, and why you can't hear me that well."

"Oh." Jensen blinked a few times as he took that in. The cottony feeling was there for a reason. "Jay?"

"He's fine," Alex said again. "Just a few cuts and bruises. You did a good job of shielding him from the blast." Jensen barely made out the muttered, " _Too_ good a job," that followed. 

"Good." Jensen laid there for a minute, taking stock. Now he could identify the faint buzzing in the background as his ears still ringing from the blast. His arms had worked well enough when he tried to push himself up, but as he moved lower down in his mental inventory, he could feel dull pain across his lower back and his right thigh. He took a breath, trying to keep his voice down even if he couldn’t judge the volume, and asked, "Am I okay?"

"You will be." Alex patted his back. "Your leather jacket is fairly well shredded, but it protected you. You're on your stomach because there's a burn on your lower back, and then there's your leg."

Worry prickled down Jensen's spine. "What about my leg?"

"Part of the undercarriage of the car came flying at you in the blast. It was obviously quite hot, and apparently it was resting on your thigh for some time." Even if Jensen couldn't hear Alex's sigh, he could feel it ruffling the hairs at the back of his neck. "It burned through your jeans and laid quite a stripe along your leg. It's a second-degree burn, which means it's going to take a while to heal."

"But it will heal?" Jensen asked, suddenly gripped by fear. He couldn't feel any pain in his leg; apparently the cottony feeling was coming from drugs as well as his damaged ears. If he was crippled by this in some way, if he couldn’t protect Jared… 

"It will heal, though it'll be at least three weeks of cleaning it and changing the dressing every day. The doctors want to keep you here for a couple of days to verify their diagnosis and confirm it's not infected. Then they'll show you how to take care of it." 

"Jay can take care of it," Jensen replied, laying his head back down. There were some perks to having a doctor boyfriend when your life was as hazardous as his seemed to be.

"I'm sure he can," Alex replied.

He was growing tired, could feel the pull of sleep trying to draw him under again. He knew his body needed the rest to heal, but he also needed to know something before he gave in to it. "Where are we? Where's Jared?"

Alex sighed again. "We're at the hospital in Sacramento. It was the closest trauma center to the airstrip. Jay's busy talking to someone else right now, but he'll be in here as soon as he can."

That wasn't exactly an answer, at least not a complete one, but it was all Jensen's body was going to let him get right now. His eyelids had already slid closed without him noticing, and he murmured a sleepy, "M'kay" before relaxing further.

There was something else Jensen wanted to ask, something tickling at the back of his mind, but it was on the other side of the cotton wool in his head, too far to reach. Whatever it was, it would have to keep.

Whatever it was soon infiltrated his dreams, and Jensen slept more restlessly than he would have liked. His dreams were filled with replaying the scene at the airstrip, except that this time Mick's call was to the newspapers, informing them about Jared's identity while he sneered maliciously at Jensen. Or Jensen was pinned down under a large piece of flaming metal, watching while Jared stood helpless and alone as a crowd of reporters demanded to know who he was and why he'd been hiding and what he was going to do now. 

When he woke up later, exhausted and alone, he realized what his mind had been trying to tell him. He didn't know what had happened to Mick or Sue, but they'd both been closer to the car than he had. If they hadn't made their later check-in, their contact back home or wherever the hell he was could have already made his information public. 

Jared could already be exposed.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

When Jared woke up to find himself in a hospital bed again, he lurched upright almost instantly. The ensuing dizziness had him putting a hand to his head as he felt the room spinning around him.

"Hey, take it easy."

He turned to see Liza setting aside the electronic tablet from which she'd been reading and leaning toward him. "Where am I?" he asked.

"UC Davis Trauma Center in Sacramento," she said, reaching for the call button. "You've been unconscious for a few hours, but the doctors don't think there are any major problems. Alex is with Jon down the hall, and Terry's watching them both."

"Is he okay?" Jared demanded.

"He will be," she said. "He was burned a little shielding you, but nothing that won't heal."

"I want to see him," Jared said, starting to throw the covers off the bed.

"Whoa, whoa, hey." Liza grabbed his wrist and held him in place, and either she was a lot stronger than she looked or Jared was a lot weaker right now than he thought. Probably some of both. "You need to be checked out first, and then you can see him."

Jared drew a breath to argue with her, but then he started coughing and couldn't stop for at least twenty seconds. _Smoke inhalation_ , his brain helpfully told him, and he told it to shut up and get his respiratory system functioning again. When he could draw a deep breath without hacking, he lay back down to meekly wait for the doctor.

He didn't have to wait long, and to his relief, Doctor Rodriguez accepted that Jared himself had medical credentials, and she broke it all down in terms he was comfortable with. Which basically boiled down to a bump on his head from hitting the ground and cuts and minor burns on his hands and face from the explosion. She didn't ask Jared anything about the explosion or what he remembered of it, and he wondered if Alex and Co. had already warned her of the confidential nature of what had happened. Either that, or it was okay for them to be in a public hospital in a way they hadn't been after their encounter with Odilon in Washington, DC.

After the doctor's visit, Jared insisted on going down the hall to visit Jensen, and Liza escorted him there. Jensen was asleep and probably would be for a while with the drugs in his system, at least according to the chart at the foot of his bed. Terry was standing guard at the door, alone since Alex had gone off to take a phone call or something.

Jared waited by his side until he was nearly slumping over in his chair, at which point he let Liza lead him back to his own room. It hurt to see Jensen lying there like that, not least because it brought back memories of the last time Jensen had been incapacitated in a hospital bed, right before Jared's whole life was taken away from him. At least he knew that unlike the last time, these were relatively minor injuries. Jensen would be up and around soon, and the best thing they both could do to make that happen was to rest.

When Jared got back to his room, Alex was waiting for him. "Good to see you up and around," he said.

"Sort of," Jared replied, easing onto the bed and more relieved than he would have expected to be off his feet. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"We're still piecing it together," Alex said, taking the seat by the side of the bed while Liza stood near the door. "But we think you need to be ready to move quickly if it becomes necessary."

Jared looked up sharply. "What does that mean?"

"It means we don't know who planted that bomb. And it means that since Mick and Sue are going to miss whatever their second check-in was, it could well be that their backup plan is already being put in place." Alex put a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry, but we have to prepare for that possibility."

"Shit," he breathed out. "So Sue's dead, too?"

Alex shook his head. "She's in another room on this hallway. She's worse off than you, but better than Jensen. I think she had turned away from the car before the explosion went off."

"Yeah, Jen tried to warn them," Jared said. 

"He knew?" Alex asked sharply.

Searching his memory, Jared said, "He knew something was wrong. He saw something underneath the steering column, and then he tried to warn Mick not to shut the door, but…" He trailed off and shook his head.

"Mick was standing closer than any of you. It must have been too close."

"You haven't found the gunman?" Jared asked.

"What gunman?" Liza asked from the doorway.

Jared blinked. How did they not know this? Then he realized that he was the only one who'd seen it happen. "Mick didn't die from the blast. I saw him moving, when we were all on the ground. And then there was someone else there, and they took the gun and shot him. You couldn't tell that from how you found him?"

"That would explain where the Colt went," Liza said drily.

"No, he was…his body was in pretty bad shape," Alex said. "And the autopsy hasn't been completed yet. But are you sure about this? You were barely conscious when our people got there."

"He was standing right over me." Jared drew in a deep, careful breath. "I had my eyes closed so he would think I was dead and he wouldn't shoot me like he did Mick. I saw it, Alex."

"You said 'he,'" Liza said. "Do you know it was a man?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. There was someone else there, a guy keeping watch for Mick and Sue, but he went off to take a leak before the car blew up. I don't know how anyone else could have gotten up there to plant the bomb. We were only inside the hangar for a few minutes."

"That must have been the case, because we didn't find anything in your car." Alex looked over at Liza. "Do you think you can talk to Sue and find out about this third person?"

"She's awake?" Jared asked.

"Awake but uncooperative. Not surprising, given the circumstances," Alex said. "Mick was her brother."

"Let me talk to her. Maybe I can get her to make that check-in after all."

Alex's eyebrows shot up. "I don't know if you want to—"

"Please," Jared said. He tried to sit up straighter, wavering a little as he did so. "Please, if there's still a chance to talk them out of releasing my name…" He cast a sideways glance at Liza, still not sure exactly how much she knew. 

"I'll see if she can have visitors," Liza said.

Jared waited for her to return, taking mental inventory of how he was doing and trying to ascertain if he could really do this. Physically, he might be exhausted and weak, but if this was his only shot to keep himself and his sister safe, he could outstubborn the pain. Mentally…well, he'd have to see.

"The doctor says you can have five minutes," Liza said from the doorway. "But no more, for both your sakes."

Drawing in a deep breath, Jared said, "Okay."

He walked carefully down the hallway, Alex hovering at his elbow. He insisted on following Jared into the room but swore he would keep silent. Jared was grateful for the support even if he wasn't going to admit it.

Inside the room, a mirror of Jared's, Sue was lying pale and still in the bed, a sharp contrast to the woman Jared remembered looming in the background with the shotgun while her companions terrorized him. He carefully lowered himself in to the chair next to the bed, aware of her hard gaze on him. 

By the time Jared had considered and discarded half a dozen different ways to start, the silence had become awkward. So he cleared his throat and said, "I'm sorry about your brother."

She snorted and looked away. "As if I believe that for a second." Her voice was raspy, probably from breathing the same noxious smoke that Jared had.

Jared folded his hands in his lap. "You both hurt me, it's true. You both…tortured me." His voice wavered, and he drew in a slow breath. "But I wouldn't want either of you dead for it."

"Could have fooled me."

He tried to think about being in her position, about what it would be like to travel all this way for something she had gone to such great lengths to obtain and then to have it not only ripped away, but to lose a family member as well. "I have a sister," he started. "Her name is Megan. She's younger than me by a few years. We lost our parents and our older brother a while back, so we're all each other has. She's in college now, I think. I don't know because I can't be in touch with her because it's too dangerous." 

Sue hadn't moved, so Jared plunged on. "You know my name, and you know that someone very powerful and very dangerous wants to find me. I've been on the run from him before, me and Jen, and we did okay. Now that we have more friends on our side, I think we'd be fine." He gave Alex a quick look and was warmed by the fatherly smile he received in return. 

"But it's not just about me, or us. I’m in this position because of choices that I made. Me, my own choices. No one coerced me into them. And I'm guessing you and your brother are the same way. You decided to live the way you do, and to do the things that you do, and to live with the consequences." Before he could worry that he might have gone too far, Jared rushed on, "But my sister—she didn't make those choices. And if _he_ finds out that I'm alive, I have no doubt that he'll use her to get to me. And I can't let that happen. So if you can still make the other check-in you were supposed to make, if there's any way to stop your colleagues from releasing the information they have about me…"

The room went silent, and Jared didn't know what else to say. He exchanged a look with Alex, who had a solemn expression on his face that didn't bode well. Jared felt like he'd used up all of his remaining energy to say his piece, and if he didn't get to lie down again soon, he would be slumping right onto the floor. The doctor was probably going to be in here in a minute, anyway, and he was wasting his time.

He was about to start the laborious process of getting up when Sue slowly rolled over. She looked at him for a long moment, and Jared forced himself to stare right back.

Finally, she wet her lips and said, "There is no other check-in. Not by phone, at least."

Jared swore he felt his heart skip a beat. "But Mick said—"

"That was to keep you off our tails." She cleared her throat. "You have no idea how long we've been looking for that piece. Or how important it was to us to find it."

"I think I have some idea," he snapped.

"Jay," Alex warned. 

Jared drew in a breath and sat back in his chair. "I don't know why it's so important to you, no." That was the closest thing to an apology she was going to get from him when he could still feel the marks on his body from the taser.

"The point is," Sue said, "we knew it wouldn't be easy getting it and getting back home in one piece." She lifted a hand, the one without an IV taped to it, to forestall Jared's protest. "Not you. We figured our leverage was good enough. But there are other people who want it as bad as we do, some who are more ruthless. So there is no other check-in by phone, because that could be coerced. So could video, if it comes to that. If one of us doesn't have the Colt in Australia by the twelfth, your information gets out. And there's nothing I can do about it from here."

Jared put a hand over his mouth. That was six days away. That was worse than he had expected. Even if he could have persuaded Sue to make the call, it turned out it wasn't going to do any good. "So we have to get it back." He looked at Alex. "We have to get that gun back."

"How're you gonna do that?" Sue demanded. "You don't even know who took it."

Alex rose from his chair and extended an arm to Jared. "We already have people tracking down the man who was supposed to be your watchdog," he said to Sue. "When we do that, we'll have the weapon as well."

As much as Jared hated to do it, he had to accept Alex's help to rise from his chair, and to stand without swaying on his feet. Sue was watching him as carefully as ever, but this time he didn't flinch. He meant what he had said—he couldn't let anything happen to Megan. If it took appearing weak in front of someone who had already tortured him, then so be it.

"Let me know what you find," was all Sue said before she closed her eyes. 

Jared looked at her for a moment before turning away and letting Alex help him back to his room. He desperately needed to rest, but if there was anything he could do to help—

"You rest now, all right?" Alex patted his arm once he was settled in bed. "Liza and Terry are going to stay here as a precaution, and we have someone among the hospital staff as well. Get your rest, and I'll talk to you again in the morning."

"Tell Jen," Jared breathed out, and Alex nodded and said, "I will," without even asking what Jared meant.

Then he was asleep.


	22. Book 4 (California), Chapter 4

The second time that Jensen woke up, Jared was the first thing he saw. "Hey," he said in a croak. At least, it sounded like a croak, thought it might have been a shout for all he knew.

"Hey." Jared's eyes lit up, and he leaned forward in the hospital chair to put a hand on Jensen's shoulder. "How're you feeling?"

Jensen drew in a slow, deep breath and considered the question. The earlier ringing in his ears was gone, and Jared's voice hadn't sounded particularly distant. He felt a little sore all over, and there was a dull throb on the back of his right thigh that was much worse than before. Still, he said, "I've been worse." When Jared pressed his lips together with a rebuke on his face, Jensen relented and said, "My leg hurts a bit, but Alex said it was going to be okay."

"It's a second degree burn," Jared said, his hand moving in slow circles on Jensen's shoulder. "That means the lower layers of the skin were burned, too, beyond the epidermis. Apparently there was hot metal lying on you for a while." His brows knitted in a frown, his expression going dark, and he fell silent.

Jensen felt the back of his neck prickle. "What is it? What aren't you telling me?"

Jared blinked. "Nothing," he said.

Jensen narrowed his eyes. "Don't make me sit up and beat on you."

That didn't get either the eye roll or the half-smile he'd been hoping for, and he started to push himself up to maybe make good on his threat. 

"Stay down." Jared's hand on his shoulder was enough to keep him in place. "Your leg needs to stay as it is until the bandages are changed. You're feeling the drugs start to wear off, and it's going to start hurting a lot more unless they give you another dose." Jensen shook his head, and Jared went on, "Even then, you're going to have to lie on your stomach for a few days so your back can finish healing."

Reluctantly, Jensen laid back down. "There's something else, though." He hadn't exactly expected Jared to throw himself at him, but it would have been nice to have something more than the careful hand on his shoulder.

Jared let out a huff of breath. "There's a lot of something elses."

Of course. The world had continued to turn while Jensen had been unconscious, and then his dreams came back to him in a rush as he realized what some of those "something elses" might be. He decided to start with the simplest question. "Are _you_ okay?" Jared looked fine, but Jensen knew that looks could be deceiving.

"Since you fell on me, yeah." Jared gestured at Jensen's leg, his mouth twisting in frustration. "You'd think I would have noticed your goddamn leg was burning. Instead I fucking fell asleep."

"I’m guessing the technical term there would be, 'passed out.'" When Jared reluctantly nodded, Jensen went on, "You know how lucky you are, right? The way that blew, we could've all…"

"Alex said it wasn't a very large device," Jared said. "It was meant to get whoever was in the car, but not much more. The first trigger was opening the car door, the second one was closing it again."

"I don't understand." Jensen shook his head. "Who would do that? Why? Why not us, too?"

"They did find another explosive device, so we probably weren't in the hangar long enough for them to booby-trap our car. There was a local paramedic's uniform stashed in one of the planes at the airstrip. We figure they were going to pretend to show up on the scene and then take the Colt in the confusion. Instead, since all of us were knocked out, they took advantage and grabbed the gun anyway."

"All of us?"

Jared nodded. "Sue's alive. You probably saved her life with your warning. Mick, though—he survived the blast, but then someone shot him. Probably would have shot us, too, if he thought we were alive." 

Jensen searched his memory, but there was nothing after seeing the car door closing and then desperately turning to try and shield Jared. "Wait, how do you know that?"

Jared's gaze cut away. "I saw him. He didn't know, but I saw him shoot Mick and take the Colt. And then he came over to where we were. You were on top of me, and I guess that whatever was burning your leg was already there even if I was too out of it to notice. I just held my breath, and he went away."

Jensen could hear what Jared wasn't saying—the terror at waiting to find out if someone was going to shoot him point-blank or if he was going to be allowed to live. And all the time, he'd had Jensen's dead weight on top of him, making him completely useless. Jensen sighed. "Here I thought I was protecting you, and instead I made it so you couldn't do a thing to defend yourself."

"You did protect me." Jared nodded down at himself. He was in a black t-shirt and grey sweats, a couple of scrapes visible on the backs of his hands and on his forehead, a butterfly bandage stark white against the skin of his forehead. "I'd be in a lot worse shape if you hadn't shoved me like that. So, thanks."

Jensen stared at him. "What else would I have done?"

"I didn't mean it like that." Jared ran his hand through his hair. "Just—look, I talked to Sue last night, all right? And now I feel like as much as I've been useless so far, I'm still just sitting around waiting for other people to do things. It's kinda driving me nuts."

"Wait, you talked to Sue?" Jensen pushed himself up onto one elbow, this time brushing off Jared's attempts to keep him flat. His lower back protested with the movement, but he could ignore it for now. "Why'd you do that?"

"To see if she would make that check-in call that Mick talked about." Jared shook his head, his bangs flying. "But there is no other check-in. They have to have the gun back in Australia in six days, or that's it. Five days, now."

"Shit." Jensen thought for a moment. "You think she was telling the truth?"

"I guess she could be bluffing to force us to get the gun back for her, but I don't think so. He was her brother, Jen. And I told her about Megan, and...it seemed to make a difference."

"You all right?" Jensen asked. At Jared's quick look, he went on, "Couldn't have been easy, talking to her like that."

"I don't really care," Jared said, lifting his chin. "I'm gonna do whatever I have to here. For Megan, and for me."

Jensen nodded and then laid back down. It sounded like that was what Jared was focused on now, himself and his sister, and Jensen could hardly blame him. After all he'd been through, after how things kept going wrong for him one after the other, he wouldn't be surprised if Jared simply wanted out. Jensen had taken away far too much from him already.

He decided right then and there that he was going to do whatever he could to get the Colt back and keep Jared's name safe. Then he was going to take down Odilon so that Jared never had to worry about him again. It was the least Jensen could do after dragging him into all of this in the first place.

The pain in his leg had been augmented by an ache in his gut at the thought of giving Jared up not long down the road, but it was the right thing to do. "You know I'm with you," he said. "Whatever you have to do."

"Yeah, I know," Jared said, but his voice sounded far away. "Listen, the doctor is going to be in in a minute, so I'm going to leave her to look you over, okay? I want to check in with Alex and see how things are going."

"I could use the rest anyway," Jensen lied. 

He closed his eyes and listened as Jared walked away. There'd been nothing more than another pat to his shoulder—no attempt at an embrace, not even a quick kiss. Maybe he was overthinking things here, but damn it, he'd almost _died_. So had Jared. Jensen might have been relatively used to the aftermath of life-threatening danger, but it seemed like Jared had gotten used to it, too. It made him think uncomfortably of what it had been like in the hospital in Bethesda, when Jared had found out he was losing his whole life and he started withdrawing from everyone and everything. Jensen had managed to get him back on a beach in Wisconsin, but he wasn't sure that was going to be possible this time.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The next two days were almost unbearable for Jared. He'd been discharged from the hospital, but since no one one seemed to think it was safe for him to go anywhere with a gunman/bomber on the loose, he was confined inside with Liza or Terry to keep an eye on him until Jensen and Sue were well enough to move. Alex had gone back to San Francisco to lead the search for said gunman/bomber, and while he updated Jared by phone every couple of hours, that didn't leave Jared anything to do in the meantime except watch the time slip away. 

Jensen had been distant after waking up, and Jared was slowly coming to the conclusion that he was getting tired of Jared not being up to the job. If he hadn't insisted that they do as Mick and Sue said, if they had gone up to the airstrip with an entire Ravenswood team and not just the two of them, everything would have gone off without a hitch. Instead, Jensen was hurt once again, one man was dead, and the gun they'd gone to so much trouble to get was out there in the wind. As aggravated as Jared was at having nothing to do, he figured that if he tried, he'd probably only screw it up again anyway.

He went for walks down the hospital corridors, his Ravenswood shadow close behind. Sue had also been medically discharged but strongly advised to remain inside the building. Since the only way to get what she wanted was to play along, she grudgingly agreed, but Jared was careful to stay out of her way.

It was around noon on the ninth, three days before their deadline, when Liza put a hand up to her earpiece. They were sitting in the waiting area down the hall from Jensen's room, waiting for the doctor to confirm he was ready to be released. After a moment, she said, "Got it," and then turned to Jared. "Alex said he's on his way back up here and that we should stay put."

Jared suppressed a groan. So close to getting out of here, even if it was just back to the hotel room and office in San Francisco, and now he was stuck again. "How long?"

"Pretty soon. He left the office a couple of hours ago." She nudged him in the side with her elbow. "Your boyfriend should be clear by now, if you want to have some time with him."

He nodded and got to his feet. "If that would be easier."

Liza tilted her head to the side. "That's not exactly what I meant. Is everything okay with you two?"

Great, now even his bodyguard was noticing it. "Fine," he said quickly. "I'll be in with Jon."

The doctor was indeed exiting Jensen's room, and she gave Jared a friendly nod. Inside, Terry was helping Jensen into a pair of sweats, and Jared felt a pang of jealousy. He should be the one taking care of Jensen.

"Oh, hey, Jay." Jensen sat down heavily on the bed, sweats halfway up his thighs. "Thanks, Terry, I think we got it now."

Terry gave Jared a quick look before going out into the hallway, no doubt to exchange information with Liza about the state of their charges' relationship. Jared moved closer to the bed and asked, "Need any help?"

"Nah, I think I can manage." Jensen carefully stood up and pulled on the sweats the rest of the way, easing them over the large bandage on the back of his thigh. Jared hadn't even seen his wound yet. Not that he didn't trust the medical staff here, but he wanted to be able to know what Jensen's condition was for himself. Unfortunately, it didn't appear that Jensen was willing to share that information. 

"Alex said he was on his way up here," Jared said, watching Jensen lower himself back onto the bed. "I guess that means he has something for us."

"I hope so. Getting sick of waiting around here, you know?"

"Yeah, I know." Jared ran his hand through his hair and looked around. "Mind if I sit?" he asked, pointing at the chair and feeling awkward as he did so.

Something flashed across Jensen's face too quickly for Jared to follow, but it seemed a lot like hurt. He soon gave a polite smile and said, "No, go ahead."

Jared sat down and was trying to think of something to say when the door opened. He knew he didn't imagine the flash of relief across Jensen's face, but since he felt the same way, he tried not to let it bother him. "Hey, Alex."

"I understand you're about ready to leave," he said. There was a laptop bag over his shoulder, and Liza and Terry were both visible in the hallway. "Sorry to keep you any longer."

"It's all right," Jensen said. He had slid back under the covers, sitting up against the head of the bed. "What you've got must be pretty urgent to bring it up here."

"It is." Alex set down his bag and started taking out a laptop. "We've found the Colt."

Jared sat straight up in his chair. "That was fast," he said, discounting the two days he'd just spent tearing his hair out.

"I should say, we've found who took it," Alex added. "We don't know for sure where it is at this moment, but we believe we can find it." He opened up the laptop and looked around. "Do you mind?" he asked, gesturing at the chair Jared was in.

"Oh!" Jared stood up. "Do you…?" He turned to Jensen.

Jensen shuffled over a few feet. Jared sat next to him, leaning up against the same pillows, feet still on the floor. He felt like he should be putting his arm around Jensen, or vice versa, but with this awkwardness between them, maybe that would be the wrong thing. He leaned back, hyperconscious of how close Jensen was and of how many inches still remained between them.

Alex had seated himself on the chair and opened the laptop so it was facing them. "We used the information Sue gave us about the man they had guarding their car, a Will Hampton," he began. "It was someone they had heard of through a friend, someone they thought to be trustworthy. There was a payment made to Hampton's bank account eight days ago, the day you got the Colt from Arizona, and there was a larger payment made two days later. We've tracked that second one back to its source." 

"And?" Jared asked, leaning forward.

Alex hit a key, and the picture of a white-haired woman filled the screen. "Her name is Esther Warren," Alex said.

Jensen's eyebrows shot up. " _Her_ name?"

"That's right. She's seventy-two years old, a widow who lives in the Los Angeles area, and she's the one who hired Mick and Sue's companion to get the Colt back from you."

"She's seventy-two?" Jared said skeptically, examining the photo. She didn't look grandmotherly, more like the kind of person who dressed and made themselves up decades younger than they were as a means of chasing their failing youth. Nevertheless, she looked harmless enough. "Why would she do something like this?"

"To add to her collections." Alex showed them another picture, this time of a small, empty pedestal in a museum. The placard below the case read, _Persian relief carving. Sandstone. 5th century BC._ "She's behind half a dozen thefts from art and anthropology museums over the last decade, but no one has ever been able to prove a thing."

"She hardly looks like a thief," Jensen said, his phrasing more delicate than Jared would have been able to manage.

"Oh, it's not her personally," Alex said. "It's her money. Her husband was a business tycoon who had the urge to collect, and far more money than he knew what to do with. They already had a substantial collection of ancient artifacts when he passed away, and she's been using his money to add to that collection in any way she can."

"Yeah, but it seems like quite a stretch from there to planting a car bomb," Jensen protested, and Jared nodded his head in agreement.

"Not when you consider what else she's done." The next picture was from the same museum, based on the design of the floor tiles, but it showed a guard sprawled out on the floor, blood spattered around his head. "This theft resulted in the death of a guard, and others have as well. There are also at least two cases where a mysterious fire occurred in the home of a collector who already possessed something that she had made an unsuccessful attempt to purchase. People died in those fires, one of them in a room that was locked from the outside. Her goal is not only to obtain these items, but to cover her tracks while doing so. It's why the explosion in Arizona occurred; no one will be able to find out how the gun was taken."

"Why would she have wanted the Colt?" Jared asked. "It's not exactly an ancient artifact."

"No, but one of her largest collections is antique weapons. Apparently this piece is extremely valuable because it was known to have been made by Colt himself, and because it has a rather checkered history." Alex made a face. "She seems to have a preference for objects that are somewhat...troubled."

Jared exchanged a glance with Jensen. "What do you mean by that?"

"Weapons that were known to have been used in particularly noteworthy or brutal killings. Objects that have a legend surrounding them about being cursed, things like that. I would imagine it enhances her reputation to be able to not only find and possess such rare objects, but objects of ill repute, if you will. Like owning something a serial killer once owned, to demonstrate that you have more power than they ever did."

Jared shivered. "Creepy."

"Maybe so, but also highly effective. The few times the authorities have investigated her, they've walked away with nothing solid." Alex showed them another picture, this one of a tall urn with Greek lettering on it. "We were asked to investigate this theft a few years ago. It had been in the home of a private collector who wasn't supposed to have had it in the first place, so he couldn't very well go to the authorities about it. There were a number of threads that led back to her, but nothing solid enough for us to act on."

"But we know she has the Colt," Jensen said, his tone only partially a question.

"It might not be in her hands at the moment, though it has been almost four days. But she placed the money in the bank account of the man whom Mick and Sue hired." Alex shrugged. "She simply paid him more than they did."

"All right, so where can we find her?" Jared asked, leaning forward in his chair.

"She lives in Malibu." The next image on the screen was of a red-tiled, Spanish-style mansion perched above the blue-green expanse of the ocean, the kind of neat and tidy image that a realtor would use. "It's only herself and her staff in the house, but security, as you would expect, is quite substantial." Alex clicked to an aerial shot with the Google Earth logo in the corner, and they saw that part of the image next to the water was only blurred pixels. "We have access to other sources of digital information, but it will take some time, and we obviously don't have a lot of that."

"I'm guessing that based on Ravenswood's previous dealings with her, she's not going to react well to anyone walking in the front door," Jensen said drily. 

Alex pointed a finger at him. "That, unfortunately, is correct. We also know from those previous dealings that she keeps a very tight lid on who is allowed into her home. Repairmen of any kind are strictly vetted in advance, and if there's anyone who is not on a pre-approved list, it can take weeks to get approval. She knows the value of what she has inside those walls, in monetary terms as well as personal value, and she's not taking any chances with it."

Jensen rubbed his hand over his jaw. "I take it sneaking past the fence isn't as easy as it looks, either?"

"Hardly." Alex flipped back to the front view of the house. "More sensors than you can shake a stick at. We're sending someone out from the L.A. office to take a look, but if we do go in, it'll likely be with minimal information."

"What do you mean, _if_ you go in?" Jared said. "If she has the gun, that's where we have to go." 

Alex gave a heavy sigh and sat back in his chair. "We've been talking about that as well. It might well be that the best thing to do is to let the chips fall where they may and deal with the consequences."

Jared knew that he was gaping at Alex, but it was Jensen who barked out, "No. No, you are not hanging him out to dry. Not when it's your fault he's here like this in the first place."

"I know it doesn't seem like—"

"No!" Jensen leaned forward in the bed. "You're going to fix this, Alex. You and me and the rest of Ravenswood and whatever it takes to make this right for Jay. If you hadn't come to us and asked for our help, we'd still be in Morro Bay, still looking over our shoulders now and again, but still safe. No way are you going to say hell with it and let him deal with the consequences of Odilon knowing he's alive."

Jared briefly closed his eyes. God, he'd missed hearing that fire in Jensen's voice on his behalf. Without thinking, he reached out and grabbed Jensen's hand. The tight squeeze he got in reply was as good as a full-blown embrace, and he straightened his shoulders and looked at Alex. "You heard what he said," he said quietly.

It took a moment, but Alex nodded. "I agree. We'll move people over to the team that's deciding the best way to infiltrate the grounds."

"And one more thing." Jensen's hand gripped Jared's even more tightly. "We're going in."

"I thought you'd say that, too," Alex replied. "I even brought overnight bags for the both of you. But I would strongly, _strongly_ advise against it."

"We have three days, Alex. Which really means two days because of the travel. If we're not in and out of Malibu by the day after tomorrow, Jay is screwed."

"You're in a hospital bed," Alex reminded him with a raised eyebrow.

"Only because we were waiting for your ass to get here," Jensen shot back. "Tell me, have you figured out yet how the Aussies knew Sam was part of Ravenswood?"

Alex sighed. "No, we haven't."

"Then you don't know who you can trust besides us. Hell, maybe we shouldn’t have even trusted you after what happened in Sydney."

"Jen," Jared warned. 

"Maybe not," Alex returned quietly. "But you are not at your best right now, son, and this is going to take everything you've got. Everything both of you have got."

"Then you'd better leave me out of it," Jared said, trying to disentangle his hand from Jensen's. "Because all I seem to do is screw things up."

"That’s ridiculous," Jensen snapped, refusing to let go of his hand. "We're the ones who keep screwing things up for you."

"How many times do I have to tell you this isn't your fault?" Jared demanded of him.

"Until you believe it," Jensen said quietly, his gaze piercing Jared's.

They stared at each other for a long moment, Jared feeling Alex's worried look on both of them. Finally he sighed and sat back against the pillows. "Whatever. Just—Jen is right, Alex. Given everything that's happened…" He sighed. "This is my problem, and I want to be there to fix it."

"All right. We'll get you down to L.A. tonight and have a plan ready by morning. You'll likely go in tomorrow evening. We can get Sue on a flight out tomorrow at midnight, but you absolutely have to be out of the house with the gun by 10 P.M., or she won't get to Australia in time."

Jared nodded. "We can do it," he said, and the clench of Jensen's hand around his was all he needed in agreement.

Alex's face creased in an unexpected but welcome smile. "I think you can."


	23. Book 4 (California), Chapter 5

The flight from Sacramento to L.A. was only about an hour, but it seemed to stretch on forever. Jensen watched the gold-and-green of the Central Valley foothills slowly fade to the near-desert. As the plane began to descend over the folded sage green and white mountains that bordered the L.A. Basin, they bounced around in the unstable air, and he automatically reached out to squeeze Jared's hand in reassurance.

He'd been pleased when Jared had chosen to sit next to him instead of across the small aisle, even if they'd only said a few words to each other. The noise of the jet engine was enough to make conversation difficult, and they'd have tonight, anyway. Besides, Sue was in the first row of seats, and Jensen didn't feel like saying anything that she might overhear.

Jared gave him a small smile and interlaced their fingers. He didn't seem as nervous as the last time they'd flown together, but nor did he seem to mind the hand-holding. A small spark of hope lit up in Jensen; maybe he'd been jumping to conclusions about Jared's reaction to recent events. Maybe they weren't so out of sync after all.

They landed at the small Santa Monica airport that handled only private planes like theirs and were instantly whisked up the coast to Malibu. Well, as much as one could be "whisked" through L.A. rush hour traffic. Even Ravenswood couldn't make the other cars on the road go away.

Jared was looking avidly out the window, and Jensen realized with a shock that this was his first time back after leaving on his ill-fated trip to Berlin almost a year ago. "You all right?" he asked, putting a hand on Jared's thigh.

"Yeah," Jared replied, settling back into his seat. "It's kind of weird. I didn't think I'd ever be back here, you know?"

"Well, we're not really back, just in and out," Jensen reminded him. That got him a roll of Jared's eyes, and he went on, "We're gonna make it so you can come back, though, Jay. One day, if you want to."

"Would you want that?" Jared asked. "To live in L.A.?"

Jensen shrugged. "I haven't thought much about where I _want_ to live in a long time." Then Jared's words sank in, and he looked at him more closely. "You mean with you?"

"Duh." Jared bit his lip. "I mean, if you want to."

He looked at Jared for a moment, really looked at him, and he was stunned by what he saw. Jared usually looked so confident and comfortable, even with all that he'd been through, but here he looked completely unsure. And while the pessimistic corner of Jensen's mind tried to brush it off as Jared not being able to tell Jensen that he didn't want to be with him anymore, the rest of Jensen's brain was telling that corner to take a hike.

He leaned closer to Jared. "I will be with you for as long as you want me to. You never have to worry about that."

His words didn't entirely erase the worry from Jared's face, but the wrinkles did fade on his forehead. The butterfly bandage over his eyebrow was gone, but there was still a regular band-aid over the spot where a piece of flying metal had tried to take a chunk out of Jared's forehead. Jared's eyes softened as he said, "Good. I...it's good to know that."

Suddenly, Jensen wondered if he hadn't been the only one thinking dark thoughts about their future together. He leaned closer so they wouldn't be overheard by Terry or Liz in the front seat and said, "Tonight, we're going to talk. No more interruptions, okay?"

"Yeah, okay." Jared searched his eyes and then leaned forward with a quick kiss. It wasn't much more than a brush of the lips, but it was more than Jensen had had in days, and it sent a shock of warmth straight through him.

They finally arrived at a small cottage perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean just as the sun was sinking behind the waves. There were two bedrooms, a tiny kitchen, and a living room half the size of what they had in Morro Bay, and Jensen wondered if it would cost one million dollars or two. Probably depended if the sliver of beach down at the foot of the short cliff was part of the property or not, he thought.

"We'll be outside keeping watch all night," Liza said. "There should be sandwiches in the fridge and muffins for breakfast. Alex will be coming by in the morning, but he said he wouldn't disturb you tonight. Something about needing your rest since you're just out of the hospital," she said with an arched eyebrow, and Jensen recognized the "mom look" she'd spoken of earlier. 

Sue didn't say a word, but stomped to the fridge, grabbed a sandwich, and retreated to one of the bedrooms. Jensen knew it was easier to keep all of them in one place tonight, but he still didn't like having her under the same roof. At least the two bedrooms were separated by the bathroom, so they could have a conversation without worrying about being overheard through the wall. 

They ate dinner in companionable silence, Jared's two sandwiches to Jensen's one. There was a TV in the small living room, but they could hear another television blaring from Sue's room and didn't want to have to compete. Besides, the noise would be a nice cover for any conversation they tried to have.

"You, uh, you want to go to bed?" Jared eventually asked.

Any other time, Jensen would have raised an eyebrow, or maybe both in a waggle, seeing as how it was only nine o'clock. But he knew that wasn't what Jared meant, and so he nodded and hefted the overnight bag Alex had brought him onto one shoulder, gesturing for Jared to go first.

The room was small, unsurprisingly, but at least it had a king-size bed in it. Jared dropped his bag on the floor at the foot of the bed and turned to Jensen, determination written all over his face. "You need to have your burn washed and cleaned out."

"I was about to ask you to do that," Jensen said, setting his bag down as well.

Jared cocked his head to the side. "You were?"

"You are a qualified medical professional," Jensen teased.

Jared's gaze dropped to the floor. "Yeah, I guess I am," he said somewhat abruptly.

"Hey." Jensen took the two steps necessary to cross the space to where Jared stood. "And there's no one I trust more to take care of me, all right?"

Jared looked up from under his bangs, his eyes barely visible in the dim light that the overhead light was throwing forth. "You didn't seem to want me to before. In the hospital, I mean."

Jensen thought back and remembered Jared coming into the room when Terry was helping him get dressed, the quick flash of hurt he'd seen on his face. "I wasn't sure you wanted to."

"Of course I did." Jared frowned. "But it seemed like you were...I don't know, maybe it was in my head, but it seemed like you were tired of everything going wrong around me. Like maybe it would be better if you did things on your own so you didn't have to worry about me messing it up."

"You're not just talking about my burn anymore, are you?" Jensen asked pointedly. When Jared shook his head, Jensen let out a sigh. "Can we sit down for a minute?"

"Only if you aren't putting any pressure on that wound," Jared said, and Jensen couldn't help the small grin that crept over his lips. It was as good as their brief kiss earlier in the car, this familiar, caring interaction with the man he loved.

"Yes, doctor," Jensen said. He sat down on the bed and rolled back, twisting so that he was on his stomach, propped up on his elbows. Then he patted the comforter next to him. "Join me?"

Jared hesitated only a second before climbing onto the bed beside him and leaning back against the pillows, his long legs extended in front of him. When Jensen looked up questioningly, Jared reached out with a hand to guide Jensen's head down onto his thigh, smoothing over his hair before coming to rest on his shoulder.

They laid there for a moment in silence, Jensen's head in Jared's lap, Jared's hand warm and solid on his shoulder. Finally, Jensen cleared his throat. Apparently his wound was going to have to wait a bit. "I'll tell you what I've been thinking about the last few days if you'll tell me the same."

"Sounds fair," Jared said, his voice level and calm and giving away absolutely nothing. 

"Okay." Jensen curled his legs up slightly, rolling the rest of the way onto his side. He drew in a deep breath and grounded himself in the feeling of Jared's hand on his shoulder. "I understand if once this is all over, after we get the Colt back and get it to Sue, and after her people decide to hold up their end of the bargain, you decide you've had enough."

Jared's hand went still. "What does that mean, _enough_?"

He looked down the length of Jared's legs, encased in denim that was too new to be worn and faded like he had the feeling Jared's jeans should be. "That you've had enough of this life. That you want to be left alone and that I should be working with Alex and everyone else to take down Odilon so that you can go back to your life the way it was and forget any of this ever happened to you."

"There's no way I could do that." Jared's voice was low but steady. "I don't think I could ever 'go back,' Jen. I know more about the world that's out there now, about the things that people do to each other, and I can't forget that. I've got scars on me and in me that make me a different person than I was." He smoothed down the fabric of the sleeve of Jensen's flannel shirt. "More than that, I wouldn't want to be without you. If I have the choice, at least."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Jensen asked, trying to turn around. He didn't have enough leverage with Jared sitting up and looming over him, not without making a big deal of it, and he supposed it might be easier for Jared to speak if he couldn't see him, anyway. 

Jared gave a half laugh without any humor in it. "It means that I would understand if once this is all over, you decide you've had enough. That I'm not what you thought you wanted. That I'm not _him_."

Jensen closed his eyes. There it was, the real problem here, and somehow he should have known this was at the heart of it. "I know that you're not Sam. I've known that all along. Well, maybe since the bridge, at least," he added quickly. "But Jared, that doesn't mean I don't want you."

"I know that. At least, I should know that. But it's like there's been this ghost between us, ever since you got your memory back, and it's like I don't even know what I'm competing with. I know I'm not as good at all of this stuff as he was. I know I'm not as strong, and I know I'm not as smart. I don't know how to do whatever it is I'm supposed to do."

At that, Jensen did turn around, ignoring the twinge in his lower back and the pull at the bandage on the back of his leg. "Bullshit. You're plenty strong and you're damn smart. You're not _supposed_ to do anything, Jared. You're supposed to be the man I love. And I don't want you to be good at the stuff Sam was good at. I want you to be you."

Jared's eyes were sad as he said, "I'm still not sure that I know who that is."

"Then I'll help you figure it out." Jensen put a hand on Jared's cheek. "'Sides, I'm pretty sure that I already know."

"Yeah?" Jared's smile was watery, but it was still a welcome sight. "Who's that?"

Lifting an eyebrow, Jensen said, "You're not fishing for compliments here, are you?"

Jared shook his head. "No, 'm not. I really don't know. I tried being Sam and that didn't work. All I've done since is wait around for other people. I can't even do the things I _am_ good at because…well, I don't know why." He gestured at Jensen's leg and then added, "And I’m not saying I don't want to go along with whatever plan Alex is making up for tomorrow, because I do. All right? But I'm terrified that I'm going to fuck it up somehow, too."

"Listen to me." Jensen waited until he was sure he had Jared's attention. "You have not fucked anything up. You've done more than anyone could possibly have expected from you, ever since the moment I met you. Most people would have given up a long time ago. Trust me, I know. The fact that you're still here means that you're incredibly strong." He got the expected derisive snort at that and went on, "I'm not kidding. Alex told me what you said to Sue, when you got her to agree to whatever it is we're doing tomorrow. You said you were sorry Mick was dead, that you wished it hadn't happened."

Jared shrugged one shoulder. "Yeah?"

"I don't think I could say the same thing." He brushed Jared's hair off his forehead, not wanting to let him hide behind it. "He kidnapped you and figured out how to break you from watching how you reacted to him. And then he fucking went and did it, and threatened to use what he got from it to send the goddamn Panther after you."

"Doesn't mean I wanted him dead," Jared said, face twisted up in a grimace. "I don't even think I want Odilon dead, really. I just don't want to be afraid of him anymore."

"Then you're a better man than me," Jensen said quietly.

Jared shook his head. "I don't think so. Just a different man than you. I’m sure if I'd been through everything you have, I'd think differently about it."

"But like you said, you're a different person than you were a year ago." Jensen put a hand on Jared's chest, deliberately over where he knew one of the taser marks had been. Jared drew in a sharp breath, but he didn't push him off. "And you're still generous and forgiving about the people who are really to blame for everything that's happened to you."

Jared studied him for a moment, blue-green eyes flickering back and forth between Jensen's. Finally he said, "That doesn't include you, you know."

Jensen blinked. "What?"

"The people who are really to blame." He folded his hand around Jensen's where it rested on his chest. "You might have picked me out from the crowd in the first place, but I chose to keep going with you. More than once. None of what's happened since is your fault."

"Then no more is it your fault," Jensen insisted.

Jared bit his lip. "You said once that if you could do things all over again, you wouldn't have taken me. Not even if it meant you wouldn't have made it through in one piece." He didn't say any more, but the question was clear in his eyes.

Jensen remembered saying that in the hospital in DC, after they'd found out that Jared Padalecki was going to lose his life and they were both going to be bundled off into Witness Protection. He'd been heartbroken, reeling from the return of (most of) his memory and the realization of what his failure to kill Odilon had led to. He'd thought about it a number of times since then, when either he or Jared woke from nightmares to pace around their house in Morro Bay or to sit on the porch staring out at the sea. He hadn't thought about it since they'd flown to Australia, but now it seemed like the answer was clear.

"I don't think I can say that anymore." His voice was getting husky, and he cleared his throat. "God help me, I know I should, given everything that I've—that's been taken from you. But I don't think I could live without you anymore." He ran a hand through Jared's hair, the strands slipping through his fingers. "You're a part of me now. You're in my heart."

They were the same words Jared had said to him in their hideout in Wisconsin, when they'd committed to staying together in whatever their new lives might be. Jared clearly remembered that, too, given the smile that was spreading across his face like the sun coming out. "Thank you," he whispered, and then he was bending forward to kiss Jensen.

It was everything Jensen didn't realize he'd been missing, the sweet warmth of Jared's mouth on his and the soft silk of Jared's hair through his fingers. Jared made a little noise and opened his mouth enough to suck Jensen's lower lip between his, and Jensen tilted his head up and leaned into the kiss, more than happy to let Jared do whatever he wanted with him.

He was shifting up onto his knees to climb over Jared's lap when the back of his thigh protested, and he couldn't help the grunt of pain that escaped him. Instantly, Jared was pulling back. "What is it? Your leg?"

He nodded and gave Jared a half-smile. "It's fine, just wasn't being careful."

When he reached for Jared again, though, Jared pulled away. "You need to let me take a look at that."

"Jay," Jensen protested, but the look on Jared's face was implacable. "Fine," he huffed.

In short order, he had his pants off and Jared's gloved hands working carefully on his thigh. Jensen grimaced at the pinpricks of hurt as the bandage came off, but when he felt something pressing against the wound, he hissed.

"Sorry," Jared said, sounding distracted. "I need to make sure it's staying clean."

He bit back the urge to say something about how it was bandaged up enough that not even a speck of dirt could have gotten in, but Jared had actually sounded hurt earlier when he said he hadn't gotten to check on Jensen in the hospital. So he stayed quiet and let the doctor do his thing.

"It looks good," Jared finally said. "It wasn't as bad as I had thought."

Jensen looked over his shoulder to where Jared was staring down at his leg, his wound framed between Jared's big hands. "Told you it wasn't that bad."

Jared was quiet for a moment. Then he said, still looking down at Jensen's leg, "I came to, and there was this stench in the air. I didn't know what it was, but everything hurt, and you were lying on top of me, and then there was the guy with the gun, and before I could do anything to help you, I passed out." He blinked. "I realized later I was probably smelling the burning metal that was on your leg."

Jensen briefly closed his eyes. Jared didn't just mean the metal, he meant the way Jensen's jeans would have been smoldering—and the skin underneath them, too. "And if I hadn't been there, that could have been your knee. Or your hands, or your face, or God knows what. I'm not sorry for protecting you."

"I'm not saying you should be." Jared reached for the roll of gauze he'd put on the bed next to Jensen. "I'm just saying that this is the first time I've gotten to look at it, and it's not as bad as I was afraid it was."

Which meant he'd been imagining all sorts of horrible things, Jensen knew. He'd taken some of the time he'd had with Alex's laptop to look up second degree burns, and some of them looked pretty damn bad. As much as it hurt, he knew he'd come away easy. 

Jensen sighed. "I should have let you in sooner. I was just…afraid that you didn't want in."

"Now that's silly." Jared unrolled a strip of tape and carefully taped Jensen's gauze in place. Then he gave Jensen a quick look. "Though I'm thinking we've both been a little silly the past couple of days."

"It's been a little stressful," Jensen said, and Jared snorted. "But things are okay now, right?"

Jared finished his taping and patted Jensen's leg. "Things will be okay after tomorrow," he said, snapping off his gloves and gathering the detritus from working on Jensen's leg. "But you and me are okay, yeah."

"Good." Jensen pillowed his head on his arms. "Then can we get back to the kissing?"

Jared snorted. Then, a second later, Jensen felt the ghost of a touch on the back of his other thigh. "Sure that's all you want to do?" Jared murmured, his fingers creeping higher on Jensen's leg.

Jensen was automatically starting to spread his legs apart, drawing in a slow inhale of anticipation, when they heard the rattle of pipes through the wall. A moment later, the shower started up, and he was abruptly reminded that they weren't exactly alone. 

Jared jerked his hand away. "Probably best not to, anyway," he said, his voice sounding huskier than before. "We should get some sleep."

"Yeah, we should." Jensen rolled over carefully so as not to disturb Jared's handiwork. "But I definitely want to do that tomorrow night, okay?"

Jared bit his lip, looking like he wanted to argue. Then he must have realized what Jensen was doing, keeping up an optimistic face about whatever lay ahead of them tomorrow, and he nodded. "Yeah, I think that'd be good."

"Good." Jensen smiled up at him, and after a moment, Jared returned it.

Suddenly Jensen felt like they had this. He and Jared were back, ready to work like the awesome team he knew they could be, and everything was going to work out.


	24. Book 4 (California), Chapter 6

Jared had felt so confident last night, pulling Jensen up next to him as he slept, basking in the knowledge that his worst fears weren't true and that even if he didn't have 100 percent confidence in himself, Jensen seemed to have enough for both of them. He'd banished the notion of asking Alex if Terry or Liz could take his place in going through with whatever plan they'd devised, instead holding Jensen as he fell asleep and feeling like they could do anything together.

When he found out what Alex had in mind for them, though, he wasn't so sure. "You want me to walk up to the front door?" he nearly squeaked. Beside him on the love seat, Jensen put a steadying hand on his back, and he leaned into it. It wasn't showing weakness anymore, he thought—it was showing a willingness to accept help.

"As a distraction," Alex said. "Jensen will be coming in from the beach side, Terry from the road. We need someone to draw their attention and keep it elsewhere."

"Absolutely not," Jensen said, and for once, Jared was inclined to agree with him. "What if the guy who planted the car bomb is there? He knows what all three of us look like, Jay especially since he saw him after the blast. They'll know something's going on in seconds. Then they'll clean up what they couldn't last time." His fingers tightened in the material of Jared's t-shirt, his voice taut with worry he didn't have to voice. 

Alex sighed. "The alternative is to ask him to do something he's not at all trained for."

Jared lifted his chin. "Whatever it is, I can do it." He was pretty sure he could, at least. "And Jen's right, they know what we look like. Terry or Liz should be the one going up to the front door." 

"Told you," Liz murmured with a raised eyebrow from her position near the kitchen doorway. 

"You haven't explained yet why I'm sitting on my ass throughout all of this," Sue burst out. "You think I can't handle a gun as well as any of you?"

"The ideal situation involves no guns at all," Alex said dryly. 

"We need you to get on that plane tonight," Jensen said, lifting his head to look Sue in the eye. He'd barely interacted with her at all, Jared had noticed, tensing up whenever they were in the same room. Not that Jared was fond of her himself, but he didn't seem to feel like doing her violence the same way Jensen did.

Jensen was going on, "This is not a foolproof plan by any means. We don't even know if the damn gun is in that house for sure. More than that, if any of us don't make it out, that gun has to. We have to know that you're ready and waiting to take it to the airport."

Sue crossed her arms over her chest and gave a grudging nod. "Fine."

An hour later, they had all of the details worked out, and all that was left to do was wait. Jared went for a jog through the small neighborhood around their cottage, Liz matching his pace even if it took nearly two of her strides to equal one of his. He knew Jensen was going over every detail with Alex and that he'd be doing the same once he got back inside, but he needed the exercise and the distraction, if only for a short while.

He was prepared to wait an interminable amount of time, but it seemed like no time at all before they were climbing into another big black SUV and rolling down the Pacific Coast Highway. Jensen was the first one out, claiming a big kiss for luck before disappearing down a small path that led to the beach. Terry was in another vehicle, planning to drive right up to the front door and claim to be lost and in need of extremely detailed directions that would hopefully require numerous people to provide. It was a crap plan—even Alex had been willing to admit that without much pressure from Jensen—but it was the best they could do in twenty-four hours. Given that they _had_ to do something, it was at least worth a shot.

It wasn't long before Jared was out of the car, too, standing on the edge of a rocky field that sloped upward toward the red-tiled roof of Esther's place. He drew in a deep breath as he nodded at Alex and shut the door. He had no idea if he could actually do this, but he had said he could. 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Malibu might have the most exclusive real estate in California, but it also had to follow the state law that required public beach access to be maintained, something for which Jensen was thankful at this moment. He was wearing a wetsuit and black hood so that he'd look like a surfer who'd stayed on the beach well after the sun had gone down. Not that he saw a soul on the beach—it was December, and the air was chilly, especially in the dark. That made it all the easier to slink down the beach in the shadow of the short cliffs until he reached his goal.

Jensen was surprised to realize after a while that he was enjoying himself. There was something about going into action after the days and weeks of waiting and relying on other people that he found a relief. It was like being Dean Winchester again, when things had been more pure, stripped to himself and his target. None of this worrying about long-term consequences or the person beside him, just concentrating on his skills and his goal. 

Which wasn't to say that he wasn't thinking about Jared, or that he wasn't looking forward to this evening when everything was settled and they had time to finally be together. But there was something almost cleansing about putting one foot in front of the other, listening for footsteps and watching for signs of surveillance, rehearsing his upcoming moves and making sure his tracks were covered, every extraneous thought or worry driven from his mind.

He was on schedule when he reached the point in the cliffs that had been marked on Alex's map. Esther Warren's property was right above him, out to the edge of the cliff but not including the narrow strip of beach on which he stood. He hadn't seen any cameras or other indicators that he was being monitored. Maybe she figured the cliff—really more like a steep hill—was a good enough deterrent. 

The sandy, pebbled soil was certainly difficult to climb. There were precious few rocks to grab a hold of, and for a good five minutes, any upward progress Jensen made was lost to sliding back down the hill, his injured leg making itself known more with every attempt. He expected someone to come out to see what the clatter of rocks was all about, but no one came.

Jensen gritted his teeth against the discomfort from his burn and tried again. Climbing equipment wouldn't have gone well with his wetsuit, so it was with bare hands and determination that he slowly but surely scaled the hill. When his fingers finally closed around the thick root of a tree perched at the cliff's edge, he closed his eyes in relief. He could do this.

It took a few more minutes to scramble up the rest of the way and catch his breath. He was no longer on schedule, but not too badly off. Even if Terry had already driven away from the front door, he and Jared should each be within range of the house.

Jensen had come up a few yards from the pool, shimmering crystal blue in the dimmed lights of the pool house. He carefully skirted the lit areas, reaching for the pouch at his belt to withdraw a small pistol. Twice he had to pause when he heard footsteps or saw a shadow moving around the grounds. Once he had to pause and backtrack when he saw the dark, boxy shape of a camera perched up on a palm tree. No alarms were sounded, no footsteps went running anywhere, so he kept moving on. 

He paused a few yards away from the largest of the back patios. Carefully scanning the stone-tiled patio itself, he saw a box at one corner with a blinking red light. He skirted it and stepped over the line where a sensor beam would be triggered. That put him right at the patio door, which was locked.

It was the matter of a couple of minutes to pick the lock and get inside. He was in a wing of the house—the mansion, really—with furniture covered in plastic dust cloths and a stuffy atmosphere. It was a shame that such a magnificent house with an amazing view like this wasn't being fully used, Jensen thought. But then, if Esther was the only resident besides her staff, it wasn't really surprising that rooms or even wings were shut off.

He checked for cameras again but didn't see any. Sliding off the hood of his wetsuit, Jensen took a firm grip of his gun with both hands and prepared to move into the hallway.

It took a few twists and turns, some ducking into doorways at the sound of footsteps, but eventually he heard voices. One of them was a woman's, unfamiliar. 

The other one was Jared's.

Jensen took a deep breath. _Fuck_. Jared was supposed to look around for the Colt, not be talking to Esther about it. That meant something had gone drastically wrong somewhere. _Told you it was a stupid plan_ , he said to Alex in his head before making mental readjustments. First he'd make sure Jared wasn't in immediate danger; then he'd start his own search for the gun and figure out how to break Jared out later. 

He crept closer to the voices, down a long hallway lined with swords hanging on the walls. Some of them had a wicked curve to them, while others were nicked and dinged enough that they had clearly been used in battle. He remembered Alex saying that Esther liked to collect weapons with a gruesome history, and he wondered for a moment how many lives had been claimed by the blades surrounding him.

A chill ran down his spine, and Jensen made himself move on. 

He rounded the corner toward the voices, checking over his shoulder to make sure he was still unseen. He could catch a glimpse between two heavy wooden doors into the room, where the white-haired woman sitting behind a huge old desk had to be Esther. Easing back, he looked across the room through the narrow window he had, and suddenly his blood ran cold. 

Jared was tied hand and foot to a chair, taking shallow breaths, trying to keep in the panic that Jensen could clearly see on his face. There was a man with a gun standing two paces behind him, and Jensen could only imagine the flashbacks Jared was having right now at being helpless and threatened.

Without hesitating, Jensen raised his gun and kicked open the door. He aimed right at Esther as he growled in a low voice, "Let him go."

From the corner of his eye, he saw Jared's head turn, saw two other people in the room start toward him, but he kept his back to the wall and eased into the room, his aim never wavering. 

"Really, now." Esther swiveled in her chair to face Jensen, seemingly completely nonplussed. He took a moment to quickly look around and take in the two men with guns, one standing behind Jared, one in the far corner of the room aiming at him. There was no sign of Terry. "There are two men with guns on you, my dear. If your finger starts to move, you will be dead before you can finish pulling that trigger."

Jensen gave her his best Dean Winchester smile, deadly and cold. "I wouldn't bet on that, sweetheart." He gave the slightest nod of his head in Jared's direction. "Untie him right now, or I will pull this trigger."

She leaned back in her chair. "And where will that get you?" she asked. "You'll be dead in a few more seconds, and so will he. Messy affair all around."

He briefly looked at Jared, taking in the clench of his jaw and the tilt of his head. His bound hands were in tight fists, his arms trembling almost imperceptibly. When Jensen looked back at Esther, he said with a slight movement of his gun, "Untie him, and I'll put this down."

"Don't," Jared warned, but there was a quaver in his voice that told Jensen his assessment was right and broke his heart all at the same time.

Esther eyed them both carefully. Then she gave a short, sharp nod. "Carl," she ordered.

He could tell that Jared was trying to stay completely still as the man suddenly loomed over him with a drawn knife, but when he lowered the knife, Jared couldn't help a flinch. Carl sawed through the ropes in short order, and when he stood up, Jared's hands instantly went to his wrists, feeling over the raw, reddened skin.

Jensen slowly raised his gun to point toward the ceiling. Lifting both hands in the air, he let the gun dangle from his fingers by the trigger guard. Carl came over to grab it from his hand. Jensen didn't react to the sharp movement, only put both hands on top of his head and hoped he looked harmless enough now.

"Sit down," Carl said, shoving Jensen toward the matching chair next to Jared.

"You okay?" Jensen asked Jared in a low tone as he took a seat, hands still on top of his head. He looked Jared over quickly but didn't see any obvious injuries, and he relaxed a fraction. He still didn't know where Terry was, but there wasn't really any way to ask right now.

"Better now," Jared said quietly, still feeling at his wrists. "I'm sorry, though. I didn't get anywhere."

"It's okay, it was a dumb idea anyway." Jensen straightened in his chair and looked Esther in the eye, slowly lowering his arms to rest them on the chair. "It probably would have been better to come in and ask for our stolen property back."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Esther said, bright blue eyes going wide beneath their heavy cover of mascara. 

Jensen snorted. "Are there so many stolen objects in this house that you can't keep track of them all?"

There was a growl from behind him, and then a cuff to the back of his head. "Watch your tone," Carl snarled. 

Rolling his eyes, Jensen thought, _Great. Not only does she have armed guards, they're fucking_ loyal _to her, too._ Aloud he said, "The gun you blew up a car and killed a man to get a few nights ago."

"Oh, that gun." Esther gestured with one hand, rings on her fingers flashing in the light. "Will, would you bring that piece to me?" 

Jensen turned around to see the second man in the room crossing to a tall cabinet in the corner. He opened the glass door and took out a gun that Jensen instantly recognized as the one that had been in his hands only a few days ago. "That would be the one." He turned back to Esther and gave her his most charming smile. "If you'd just give it back to us, we'll be on our way."

Esther's eyebrows shot up. "From what I understand, you had already handed it over to someone else."

"We're here on their behalf," Jared said, and Jensen bit back the urge to tell him to be quiet. The more he kept Esther's attention focused on himself, the better it would be for Jared.

Will was placing the Colt on the desk in front of Esther, and she smiled as she reached out to take it. "I have been looking for this piece for a very long time," she said, red fingernails trailing over the barrel. "Did you know that Samuel Colt made it himself?"

"Why did you blow up the sheriff's office?" Jared asked. "If you knew we already had it?"

"Because now no one will know that it's gone." She narrowed her eyes at him. "Do you mean to tell me you had no plan for how to keep the theft undiscovered?"

"No, we had a plan," Jensen cut in. "It just got—blown up."

"Right." Esther tapped the Colt with one fingernail. "Just like you should have been."

From the corner of his eye, Jensen saw Jared stiffen, and the back of his own neck started to prickle. He measured how far he would have to lunge to get to Will and the gun at his side, but without knowing where Carl was behind him, he couldn't make a move.

"I was quite disappointed by that," Esther went on. "To only put down one of four targets? Will, I paid you for a better job than that."

Jensen's head whipped up as he realized the man standing in front of him was the one who had set the car bomb and shot Mick, who would have shot all of them if Ravenswood's SUVs hadn't come barreling up the hill. "I’m sorry, Mrs. Warren," he was saying. 

"Yes, yes," she said with a wave of her hand. "You said that before, and it doesn't change the fact that three people are still alive who shouldn't be." She gave him a hard stare for a moment and then gestured toward the sliding glass doors to her right. "Go wait out on the patio."

Will did so with an almost grateful expression on his face, but Jensen didn't relax. This all seemed staged.

That was why he wasn't surprised when Esther said, "Carl," with a sideways nod of her head. The man took something from his front pocket as he reached for the gun at his hip. Then he went out on the patio. A second later, he raised his gun and fired three quick shots, muffled by the silencer he had attached. Jared jerked in his seat with the sound, and Will crumpled to the ground, arms outflung as he hit the patio tiles.

There was silence in the study. Then Esther looked back and forth between the two of them. "I have been looking for this piece for a _very_ long time," she repeated.

Jensen was surprised to hear Jared clear his throat, and even more surprised by the words he said. "Maybe there's something else we could get you instead."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jared could feel Jensen staring a hole into the side of his head, could practically hear him asking Jared what the fuck he was thinking, but he couldn't take it back now. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Carl coming back in the room, his gun barrel practically smoking, and Jared had no doubt that if they didn't think of something quickly, they would be next. 

Esther was looking at him coolly. "What could you possibly have that I would want?"

"We got that, didn't we?" Jared nodded at the Colt on the desk. "Three weeks ago, we'd never even heard of it."

"Jay," Jensen warned in a low tone.

Jared closed his mouth, but he didn't look away from Esther. He would like to think that he was standing his ground, but truth be told, he felt like a small animal in front of a snake that was about to strike, unable to look away even if he wanted to. 

Finally, she said, "Maybe there is something."

Jared tried not to look hopeful. There was no telling what he might be getting himself into here. Getting the both of them into, he corrected himself.

"Thought you'd been looking for that a long time," Jensen was drawling, gesturing with his chin toward where the Colt lay. "Thought you went to an awful lot of trouble to get it."

Jared literally bit his tongue to keep from saying something. He trusted Jensen, really he did, but he couldn't figure out what the hell he was doing here.

"I did," Esther said, caressing the barrel of the gun. "And it is every bit as beautiful as I expected." She examined it a moment longer before she picked up the weapon and aimed it almost casually at Jensen. "I have to say, though, I've never been a fan of guns. I much prefer blades." She lowered her head to look at Jensen from under her thin eyebrows. "Like the ones you saw on your way in." When Jensen flinched, she let out a laugh. "Don't think we didn't know you were coming, dear. It was quite entertaining watching you climb that hill, though."

Jensen's lips were pressed tightly together. "Glad I could amuse you," he ground out.

"You have no idea how many people have tried to get into this house and failed," she replied. "The transparency of tonight's attempt was one of the worst. Stopping to ask for directions when there's only one road between the sea and the mountains? Really, I would have thought better of Ravenswood than that."

Jared was amazed at how Jensen was managing to keep a blank face, considering that his own jaw was dropping open. "Ravenswood?" Jensen asked, sounding only mildly interested. "What's that?"

Esther's mouth twisted. "Don't play stupid," she snapped. "The two of you didn't spirit that gun out of Arizona on your own. Nor did you find me without some help. I've been doing this longer than you've been alive, young man, and I know a thing or two."

"Fine." Jensen leaned forward in the chair, still keeping his arms lined up with the arms of the chair as if he was tied to it. Jared was going to have to give him hell later for giving up his own gun so easily, even if Jared had been close to panic at the time. "What is it that you want?"

She leaned back in her seat, regarding them both. Finally, she nodded toward the gun. "Samuel Colt made that," she said. "He made a knife at around the same time. A beautiful piece of work. It bounced around a little until a collector from France who had an obsession for the Wild West got a hold of it. He brought it home with him, and when he died, he willed it to a local museum."

"If you know where it is, why haven't you already gotten it?" Jensen asked.

Her thin lips twisted in a smile. "Because it's well protected. And it hasn't been my highest priority. It does, however, seem like a fair trade in this situation."

"Where is it?" Jared asked.

"The Musée d'Leveque. In Marseille."

Beside him, Jensen drew in a sharp breath. When Jared turned his head, he saw his face draining of color, even though he was keeping his chin up and his expression blank. It took Jared a moment to realize why this bother Jensen more than anything else that night had. 

Marseille was where Sam had died.

He closed his eyes and sat back in the chair. Of all the places in the world for them to have to go—

"When do you want it by?" Jensen asked, his voice more level and flat than Jared would have expected. Jared opened his eyes to see Jensen's hands locked around the arms of his chair, knuckles white.

Esther's smile grew. It wasn't pretty. "I suppose that's up to you." Before either of them could ask what she meant, she said, "Carl."

Jared whirled in his chair to see Carl bringing forth an open laptop. There was a video image on it, and the datestamp in the corner indicated it was live. He squinted at the image, and suddenly his heart skipped a beat. "Jen," he said, reaching out to grab Jensen's arm.

On the screen, Alex Conklin was sitting in the back seat of an SUV. The camera was being aimed from the front seat, far enough away to show that his hands were bound together in his lap and that there was a gun resting against his side.

"You _bitch_ ," Jensen snarled, and despite holding the laptop, Carl still managed to strike him in the back of the head again.

Jared's mind was racing. Alex had been in the car with Terry, while Liz had been watching Sue. If Esther had known all along that Terry was a ruse, she could have had their car followed and grabbed the two of them in anticipation of something just like this. "Where's our other colleague?"

"He's safe as well," Esther replied. She nodded, and Carl closed the laptop. "Both of them will remain that way, as my guests, until you return with my knife."

Jensen drew in a deep, shuddering breath. "We get that now," he said firmly, pointing at the Colt.

Esther eyed him for a moment. Finally, she shrugged. "If you insist."

"I do." Jensen stood up, practically vibrating with fury. "We're leaving with it."

Surprisingly—or perhaps not, given the multiple ways she had demonstrated how long her reach was—Esther didn't protest. They were escorted out the front door, Colt in hand, and left at the side of the highway.

As soon as they were alone, Jensen turned to him, the near-full moon above them lighting up the anguish on his face. "Jay," he said, sounding as broken as Jared had heard him.

"It'll be all right," Jared said, putting his arms around Jensen and willing both of them to believe it. "We can do this. It'll be all right."


	25. Book 5 (Marseille), Chapter 1

The plane flight from LAX to Paris was pretty much the opposite of Jared's ride to Sydney. They were still in first class, and Jensen was still beside him. But instead of Jared being nervous about putting on a performance, it was Jensen who couldn't seem to sit still. Instead of feeling good about having Ravenswood at their back for the first time, they were both aware of the cloud hanging over their heads, and Jensen was torn up wondering if Alex was okay.

Jared had the feeling that a quick hand job in the seats wasn't going to improve anyone's mood this time. Not to mention that they had the two seats that were between the plane's two aisles. It was the only way for them to sit beside each other, but it was distinctly less private than the flight to Australia had been.

To his right, on the other side of the console between their seats, Jensen was typing away at the laptop he'd brought along. He seemed determined not to sleep at all during the red-eye flight, although Jared had managed to catch a couple hours after takeoff and would probably try to sleep again soon. Ten hours in the air was a long time, but as far as he knew, Jensen hadn't put down the computer.

He leaned over and murmured, "What're you working on?"

"She sent the files," Jensen replied, not looking away from the screen. "It's a challenge, all right."

"Where is it?" Jared asked.

"It's a little museum in the seventh arrondissement," Jensen replied, like that meant anything to Jared, continuing to type and click without further explanation.

Jared sighed and sat back in his seat. Maybe it would be better to wait until they were in the city itself. Jensen would have to talk to him then. Then he thought about how well the last week had gone with them _not_ talking to each other, and he set his jaw.

"Is it somewhere you've been before?" he asked.

"Might be," came the terse reply.

Jared drew in a slow breath. Snapping back at Jensen wasn't going to get him anywhere.

Jensen cast him a quick look and must have seen his expression, because he let out a short breath. "It might be, okay? I honestly don't know. Of all of the things I don't remember, Marseille is the patchiest."

Jared nodded in agreement. It made sense—even if Sam's death had been a powerful enough memory to break through Jensen's amnesia at the sight of Jared in trouble, the double edge of this particular blade was that Jensen's messed-up head had probably blurred a lot of what led up to that event. For all of the questions he'd asked since Jensen's memory had returned, he'd usually stayed away from Sam for that reason.

And other reasons as well, but those were the ones he'd never admit to out loud.

"Does that mean you won't know anyone there?" he asked. "From Ravenswood, I mean?"

"If I did, I wouldn't trust them farther than I could throw them," Jensen muttered. "They never figured out to my satisfaction exactly what happened, who skipped out on us or maybe even betrayed us. That's not a chance I'm going to take again. Besides, the few people who knew me here knew me as Dean Winchester, and he's dead. And I'm not about to let that whole thing unravel by explaining who I really am. We'll keep in touch with Liza and San Francisco, but anything we do here, we do it on our own."

"At least we have Liza," Jared offered.

Jensen snorted. "At least Alex's boss isn't blaming us entirely."

Jared supposed that was right. Whoever Alex's boss was—he'd never met the man, and apparently Jensen didn't even know who he was—he had agreed fairly quickly with Jensen's insistence that the two of them had to be the ones to go to Marseille, based on their arrangement with Esther. On a quick conference call from the cottage in Malibu while Liza took Sue and her precious cargo to the airport for her flight home, Jensen had explained what had happened and what they now had to do. Alex's boss, who never identified himself by name, had said that he wished Alex had run his plan by him before going through with it, but what was done was done. They would work on their end to find where Alex and Terry were being held, and Jensen and Jared would do their best to carry out Esther's instructions.

"I'm still surprised Alex didn't have to get his permission for doing what he did," Jared said. "You would think there would be a chain of command to follow."

"It's not the military," Jensen said.

For a moment Jared remembered Alex telling him the same thing, in a basement in Barcelona when neither of them was sure they could trust the other, while Jensen was out on his own. "What do you mean?"

"It's a very decentralized organization," Jensen said. His fingers flew over the keyboard, and then he hit enter and stopped. "It has to be, to be flexible enough to respond to threats and carry out the kind of work that it does. People like Alex have a great deal of freedom to create their own missions."

"So, going to Sydney. That would have been his doing?"

"Probably." Jensen let out a sigh. "At least, it would explain why he's been putting so many resources at our disposal to help fix it. Enough that it's gotten him in trouble, too."

Jared put a hand on Jensen's knee. "You're worried about him, aren't you?"

"He's not a field agent. I'm not sure he ever was, at least not in the sense that I was. He's good at organizing, seeing the big picture and putting pieces in play. Fucking good chess player, let me tell you. But he's not used to…" He trailed off.

"She's not going to hurt him. As long as we give her what she wants." When Jensen shot him a quick look that had _Don't be naïve_ written all over it, Jared shook his head. "No, listen. If she knows what Ravenswood is, she's got to know that they can fuck her up pretty good. She's doing this to keep something over our heads," he said, gesturing between the two of them, "but she doesn't want to threaten the organization with it. She knows that would hurt her in the long run."

"She's seventy-two," Jensen muttered. "Her run isn't going to be that much longer." 

"Could be thirty years. It's not like she can't afford the best doctors." 

"That's not what I mean," Jensen said with a dark look.

Jared grimaced. "Look, it's bad enough that we're…" He leaned closer to Jensen. " _Stealing_ something. Don't go talking about anything more than that."

Jensen looked at him sideways. "If you don't want to do this—"

"That's not what I said." Jared held up one hand. "It's just…look, the Colt was one thing, okay? It was shut up in an evidence locker, and as far as we know, the rightful owner died some years ago, right?" Jensen nodded warily, and he went on, "But this is different. This is something that has a real owner, and probably a real provenance behind it, and if it goes missing, someone is sure as hell going to notice." A sudden, horrible thought occurred to him. "She's not planning on doing what she did in Arizona, is she?"

Jensen's voice was low enough as to barely be audible as he said, "She's not going to blow up the museum, no." He rotated the laptop so Jared could see it. "Like she said, she's been planning this for a while, she just never had anyone to carry it out. She has a replica made that will fool anyone who doesn't look too closely. She's sending it overnight to our hotel. It might even get there before we do."

"So we're swapping it out?" Jared asked. When Jensen nodded, he said, "Huh."

Jensen's eyes narrowed. "That doesn't seem to satisfy you."

Jared shrugged one shoulder and said, "It doesn't mean I'm not going to do it, if that's what it takes to save Alex. I know how much he means to you." Jensen nodded tightly, and he went on, "I guess it just makes me wonder how much more I'd be willing to do. I've crossed so many lines already in the past year that I never would have thought of before. Now that I have a chance to think about one of those lines in advance, I can't help wondering what else I might come around to thinking is okay."

"I know what you mean." Jensen sighed. "I think I had this same conversation when I started carrying a gun on assignments."

"With Sam?" Jared asked.

"Yeah. Except, he was the one asking me if I was comfortable crossing some of those lines. He made it sound like it was losing a piece of me or something, like I'd never be the same person again." His gaze went far away for a moment. "I guess he was right. Doesn't mean I regret it, though." He looked at Jared, his focus sharpening. "Doesn't mean you should do something you don't want to. I can do this myself."

"No, you can't," Jared said with a shake of his head.

Jensen's eyebrow shot up. "You don't even know what the plan is yet."

"But I'm right, aren't I?" Jared pressed.

"It would be a lot easier with help," Jensen admitted. It was the closest to a _yes_ that Jared was going to get, and he had to fight back a grin.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It was about an hour later that Jensen handed over his laptop to Jared. "Take a look at the plans and the maps she sent," he said. "I'm going to try and get some sleep."

He wasn't sure if Jared's pleased expression was because Jensen was sharing the information with him or because Jensen was going to attempt to sleep. Probably a little of both, knowing Jared. Reclining his seat until it went flat and putting on his eyeshade, Jensen closed his eyes and tried to relax.

At first, Jensen didn't think sleep was going to happen. His mind kept racing, picking through Esther's plan for what he could use and what he would instead shape into his own way of doing things, his way and Jared's. There was some potentially useful information she had collected about the guards at the museum, the alarm system they used, things like that. Jensen would have to double-check all of it and see if anything had changed. He wasn't naive: he knew that the only reason she had handed this job over to them was because here were two people with a lot to lose but no way to be traced back to her if they failed. Jensen was certainly not going to let that happen.

Somehow, despite his racing thoughts, he slipped into sleep, because the next thing he knew, he was standing on the streets of Marseille. _This is a dream_ , he told himself, turning around to take in the steep, narrow streets winding up the hill from the sea, the houses in their sun-washed pastel colors, the fishing boats bobbing down in the inlet. 

He saw movement in the corner of his eye, and he turned to run, knowing instinctively as you do in a dream that running was what you had to do even when your limbs were moving in slow motion. He pounded down cobblestone streets, twisting and turning to evade his pursuers, but all the time he heard footsteps coming closer. He turned and ran uphill, through a market of vegetable vendors and customers who shouted angrily as he shoved between them, or tried to, his movements feeling as slow as molasses. Past the central market, down into the narrow streets near the old docks, dread looming over him darker and deeper with every pounding footstep.

Jensen rounded a corner, and he was there. The curve of the street, the line of parked cars, the stone buildings he'd seen in his memories when those were the only memories he had. On the ground was a tall figure, sprawled and still in the darkness, a pool spreading out from his chest and trickling down the cobble stones in a garnet-red stream.

The footsteps were ever closer, but Jensen could only move at a snail's pace, dread choking him. He got close enough to see what he knew he would see—except that he didn't. It wasn't Sam's face that was pale in death, it was Jared's, eyes wide open and unseeing and yet looking right through him. Jensen froze in horror.

Slowly, Jared's mouth opened. "You did this," he whispered. "You did this to me."

Jensen shot up in his seat with a gasp, heart thumping. He looked around wildly, the adrenaline from the nightmare flowing through him. The plane was dark, that time of the flight when the flight attendants pretended it was nighttime for about four hours between dinner and breakfast. No one was in the aisles, and the other inhabitants of first class all seemed to be asleep.

Jensen rubbed his hand over his eyes before looking at Jared. The laptop was folded shut on the center console, and Jared's seatbed was flattened out all the way. Even a first class seat wasn't enough to hold his enormous frame, and his feet were dangling over the end of the seat even though his head was all the way up on the headrest. His face was turned toward Jensen, and the way the blue Air France blanket was tucked around him was clearly a flight attendant's doing.

He watched Jared sleep, taking in the calm breaths through his parted lips, the way his eyelids twitched as his eyes darted back and forth. _Hope he's dreaming something better than me,_ Jensen thought, even if he didn't have any reason to believe it was true.

Eventually, Jensen raised his seat back up and reached for the laptop, knowing sleep was not going to come to him again.

The only good thing about being up and logged on was that he received word as soon as Ravenswood did that Sue had made it safely to Australia with the Colt and that their deal was concluded. Jensen didn't like it—there was no way of knowing if she'd really keep her end, especially having lost Mick, and he still didn't know how many people knew Jared's real identity. If only one person knew a secret like that, there was always a way of it getting out.

Still, it made the struggle of the last few weeks worth it, and he was looking forward to telling Jared when he woke up. Good news had become ridiculously rare for them. Hell, things going as planned had become rare enough.

When the dim overhead lights slowly started to brighten a few hours later, Jared began to stir. Jensen looked over, and he couldn't help the smile that curled the corners of his lips as he watched Jared's eyelashes flutter as he started to wake. Once this was over, _all over_ , and Jared was safe from Odilon for good, they were going to take about a year and do nothing but be together, somewhere far away from anywhere that held bad memories for either of them. Maybe the Caribbean, Jensen thought. Better yet, maybe somewhere in the South Pacific, as far away from the rest of the world as he could get. He'd have to ask Alex if he knew if Jensen had ever been to the South Pacific.

Just the thought that he didn't know for sure was enough to darken his thoughts, and he was frowning when Jared's eyes finally opened. He blinked as he focused on Jensen, and then he abruptly sat up. "What's wrong?"

Jensen blinked back and then shook his head. "Nothing. Just thinking." He gave Jared a small smile. "How'd you sleep?"

"Not bad for an airplane." Jared was still looking at him warily, but then he stretched out his arms and turned in both directions to crack his back. It was the same routine he did every morning, at least on the mornings when neither of them had been troubled by a nightmare, and it was oddly comforting to see it here. "How about you?"

He shrugged one shoulder. "Got a few hours." There was no need to tell Jared why he hadn't slept for long, or what he'd seen when he did. Not like it took a lot of effort to figure out what that dream meant, anyway. 

Jared was raising his seat and tapping on the screen in front of him. "Looks like another hour and a half to go," he said, taking in the map and the estimated time to arrival on the screen.

"Yeah, and then the two hours to wait before the last flight." 

"Yeah." Jared reached across and touched his arm. "You doing okay?"

He nodded quickly. "Fine."

"Jen—"

"Hey, good news." He turned toward Jared. "They got a message from Sue. She made it back okay, and they're holding up their end of the deal. So you're in the clear."

Jared closed his eyes and let out a huge breath. "That is good news." When he looked at Jensen again, he had a rueful expression on his face. "Any other time, I'd say that calls for a celebration, but this doesn't seem like the time, you know?"

"Or the place," Jensen muttered.

Jared's eyes softened. "Yeah, that too."

Jensen cleared his throat and sat up straighter. "Speaking of, I think I've got things all worked out. We'll take today to walk around, get settled in, let the jet lag wear off. Tomorrow will be for visiting the museum and making sure our intel is accurate." He waited until Jared nodded and then said, "And Friday is the big day."

"Do we have a way out yet?" Jared asked.

Jensen raised an eyebrow. "I'm sure you'll be utterly shocked to find that Esther made no provisions for that whatsoever."

Jared rolled his eyes. "She does want this knife, doesn't she?"

"Oh yes, she does. But she'd much rather that if someone's going to get caught with it, it's going to be someone not associated with her." Jensen shrugged. "My guess is that we're going to have to bring it all the way back to Malibu."

"Shit." Jared fiddled with the blanket over his lap. "We can't just get on one of Ravenswood's planes and avoid everything that way?"

Jensen knew that by "everything," he meant Customs and Immigration and any other officials who might be curious about two men traveling with a wicked-looking knife in their checked baggage, regardless of whether or not the replica enabled their theft to go unnoticed. The piece Esther was looking for truly was nasty, a blade almost as long as his forearm that was thick enough to have a solid blade on one side and a jagged set of serrations on the other. He didn't know why anyone, much less a gunsmith in the Wild West, would have made a knife like that. The professional in him saw it as overkill.

But then, maybe that was the point.

"That's one of the possibilities," he finally answered Jared. "If I can arrange it via San Francisco."

Jared cocked his head to the side. "You're really not going to deal with their people here, are you?"

"I'm hoping not to deal with anyone here. In and out as fast as we can, that's the goal."

Jared nodded. "Sounds good."

The flight attendant was starting down the aisle with breakfast, and Jensen welcomed the reprieve. Obviously, he wanted to get this over with as fast as possible because of Alex. Every minute they spent without the knife in their possession was one more minute he was in danger. Overall, Jensen agreed with Jared's earlier assessment—there was no need for Esther to hurt Alex or Terry, at least not as long as she was sure that things were moving in the right direction. That didn't mean Jensen didn't want Alex out of harm's way as soon as physically possible.

There was also the matter of spending as little time in Marseille as possible. It was funny—for all that Jensen could picture the street where Sam had died in vivid detail, in his memories and in his dreams, he didn't have the foggiest idea _where_ it was. Poring over the map hadn't jogged anything, much as he'd been dreading it.

He looked at Jared, already bent over his breakfast tray, and the memory of his dream washed over him like a premonition. _Nothing's going to happen to you_ , he silently promised.

He was all too aware that he'd made that same futile promise to Jared before.


	26. Book 5 (Marseille), Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a really important chapter, so, you know, buckle up.

Marseille was nothing like what Jared had expected.

He knew it was a French city on the Mediterranean, so he figured it would look like Barcelona or even San Francisco or L.A. But instead of green-gold hills rising from the sea, there were rugged, rocky white hills spotted with pine green. The city itself was much grittier than he had expected, the streets in need of a cleaning and many of the shop fronts either covered over with iron bars or shuttered completely.

"It's a port city," Jensen said brusquely when he asked. "Tourists go to Barcelona, or Monaco if they're rich. They don't come here."

Jared pondered that as he looked out of the window of the train carrying them from the airport to the city center. They were passing a series of grimy high-rises that made him think of an inner city neighborhood in the U.S., not Europe. "What were you guys delivering here?"

"Hell if I know," Jensen replied, closing his eyes and sitting back in the train seat.

Jared sighed. He knew Jensen had barely slept on the flight, and the look on his face when Jared mentioned it suggested that nightmares had been the cause. Not that he wasn't worried about Alex and wanting to make sure all of the details were in place, but Jared knew it had to be hard on Jensen, being here with no time to prepare himself for returning to the place of his nightmares. Watching the crowded, dingy buildings they passed by, he vowed to keep a close eye on Jensen.

They alighted at the Gare Saint-Charles, the station reminding Jared of Paris with its grand scale and high, arched ironwork ceiling. He didn't have much time to look around, as Jensen was striding ahead toward the taxi stand.

Their driver, a man with dark skin and curly hair, tried to keep the conversation going, but Jensen's terse replies were strong discouragement. When he looked to Jared in the rearview mirror, Jared shrugged and said carefully, " _Je ne comprends pas_." The driver shrugged as well and proceeded to pick up his phone and chatter away until they reached their destination.

It was an apartment building on a main boulevard, a tall white structure that could have been in any city in the world. They got their bags from the trunk and went inside, where Jensen conversed with the man behind the front desk, giving the same short responses he had to the driver. At one point, something the clerk said must have struck a nerve, because Jensen went stone still for a moment, only a muscle in his jaw twitching. When he gave the clerk a tight-lipped smile in response, the clerk's expression grew more serious, and he completed the rest of their transaction without any extraneous talk.

They went up to their apartment, one large room with a galley kitchen and a small table with two chairs against one wall, a desk against the other, and a sofa sitting awkwardly in the middle. There was no door to the bedroom, only an opening in the long wall near the windows. Jared poked his head into the bathroom and was relieved to see that he was going to be able to take a shower without imitating a contortionist. "Should we go out?" he asked over his shoulder.

He turned to see that Jensen had put down their bags and was holding aside the sheer curtains to look outside. "In a bit."

Nodding, Jared fought back a yawn. "Okay, but it'll be dark in three hours or so."

"Damn it, give me a minute, okay?"

He looked up sharply to see Jensen already pinching the bridge of his noise as he let the curtains fall. "Sorry," Jensen said. "I know you're right, I just…" He trailed off and shook his head.

"Hey, it's okay." Jared came forward until he was standing next to Jensen. Hesitantly, he put a hand between Jensen's shoulder blades, and when Jensen relaxed into it, he pulled gently until Jensen was within the curve of his arm. "I'm here," he said, leaning his forehead against Jensen's. "I'm right here."

Jensen let out a huff of breath and turned into him. "How do you always know?" he asked softly, his breath whispering against Jared's cheek.

"Know what?" He was too close to Jensen to look at him without going cross-eyed, so he closed his eyes and breathed in the familiar, comforting scent instead.

"What I'm thinking. What to say to make me feel better."

Jared thought about explaining that he was pretty sure he knew what nightmare had flung Jensen from sleep, was even now making him reluctant to go outside lest his memories of Sam become flesh and blood in Jared's form. Instead, he pulled Jensen a hand's-span closer and whispered in his ear. "I'm really fucking smart."

Jensen let a out a surprised snort, and Jared drew back with a grin on his face. "Also, you're easy," he added. "To someone who knows you, at least."

"Maybe so." Jensen looked at him closely, his gaze flickering back and forth between Jared's eyes. Then he leaned in and gave Jared a kiss, warm and deep and everything Jared had been missing while he'd been withdrawing since Sydney. 

He sighed happily when they pulled apart, and he was thrilled to see a sparkle in Jensen's eyes that hadn't been there for a while. "We still need that time alone together," Jared reminded him.

"Yeah." Jensen reached up to touch his face, fingertips moving over Jared's stubble. "After we go out, okay? I need to walk around and get my bearings." 

"Sure thing." Jared turned his head to kiss Jensen's palm. "Anything you want."

"I'll remember that," Jensen warned, and Jared only grinned in reply.

Walking around Marseille with Jensen did remind Jared in some ways of Barcelona. They were hand-in-hand, pretending to be tourists taking in the sights while actually scoping out the city and its people. Jared knew he was spending too much of his time on the former instead of the latter, even without the occasional warning look from Jensen. He could remember the excitement that had been flooding through him in Barcelona, those first few days after they had been together in the cramped bunk of the train from Amsterdam and were finally free to act on their attraction to each other.

At the same time, it felt completely different to know what was going on, to not have a cloud hanging over them from wondering who Jensen might be, even if the threat to Alex and Terry was another kind of darkness on their minds. Jared knew Jensen was determined not to call on the local Ravenswood office for any reason, but he also knew that he himself could if they absolutely needed to. He wasn't Sam Winchester the way Jensen had been Dean—he still had the scars to remind himself of that fact, after all.

So it was with less excitement but more confidence that Jared gripped Jensen's hand as they rounded a corner in the city center and entered the main boulevard of La Canebière. The street was better kept and busier than most of the streets they had been on so far. Jared recognized the names of some of the clothing shops they passed, the same names that were found on upscale shopping streets like this around the world.

A splash of color caught his eye, and he looked to the right to see a side street that was occupied not by cars, but some kind of farmer's market with colorful stalls and vegetables laid out. "Hey, Jen," he said, tugging on Jensen's hand. "Can we go take a look?"

Jensen was opening his mouth to reply when he turned to follow Jared's pointing finger. Instantly, his face turned white, and he came to a dead halt on the sidewalk. The couple walking behind them exclaimed loudly as they nearly crashed into Jensen, and Jared waved his hands apologetically.

When he turned back to Jensen, he saw that Jensen's jaw was set and his expression blank. "Let's not go that way," was all he said, grabbing Jared's hand again and tugging him in the opposite direction.

They walked down the boulevard as it gently sloped toward the sea. Even here on the main shopping street of the city, there were barely any other people around. Maybe it would be more lively after dark, Jared thought. La Canebière ended at the old port, the long, narrow rectangle of the harbor now hosting yachts and smaller craft instead of the commercial fleets that had built this city since the Roman times. At least that was what Jared thought the informational sign posted next to the quay said—he knew enough Spanish that he could parse out some of the French, though not every word. 

Jensen was hesitating, but eventually he turned to the right and started to walk along the Quai du Port that circled the harbor. It was lined with hotels and restaurants, and now Jared was starting to see the tourists. He was also feeling the wind, blowing straight off the sea with nothing to stop it but the masts of the ships anchored in the old port.

"Let's go inland," he said, tugging at Jensen's hand.

They cut inland and soon found themselves on a street so narrow and steep that it became a stairway. Glad for the exercise, Jared bounded up the steps before turning to take in the view and wait for Jensen. 

He was surprised to see that when Jensen reached him, his face wasn't red with exertion or cold, the way Jared could feel his own cheeks glowing. Instead, his face was as white as it had been on La Canebière, and Jared's heart lurched in concern. "Jensen?" 

It was as if Jensen hadn't heard him, stepping past him and across the road into the street beyond. It was a narrow passageway between two buildings, bright blue shutters and angry red graffiti in sharp contrast to the peach and buff-colored buildings on the main street. The pavement was marked with a single traffic lane, but Jared found it hard to believe that a car could fit down the street. He felt like his shoulders could brush the walls on either side.

Jensen was slowly walking down the passageway, and Jared hurried after him. When he caught up, he saw that Jensen was breathing as heavily as if he was still climbing steps, and his shoulders were stiff and tense. Jared put a hand on his lower back, but Jensen didn't react.

They came to an intersection with an even narrower side street, paved with cobblestones instead of asphalt. Jensen drew in a sharp breath, and he took two steps down the side street before coming to a dead halt.

Jared followed his gaze up the street. There was nothing there, only more of the same pastel-colored buildings with white shutters and metal bars over the first-story windows. The blue sign on the building above him read in white lettering, "Rue de Refuge," and Jared winced at the irony. Even though the cobblestones were clean, Jared had the feeling that Jensen wasn't seeing what was right in front of him. He was seeing something that had happened years ago, something horrible that had pierced through the fog of his amnesia and that he still saw when he tried to sleep.

Jared drew in a slow breath and looked around. There was no one in sight, no one to see or disturb them as Jensen tried to deal with being in the one place in the entire city he'd been trying to avoid. Jared straightened his shoulders, determined to keep watch while listening for any sound from Jensen. 

After what must have been at least two minutes, Jensen drew in a ragged breath. "You should leave, Jay," he said, his voice as rough as Jared had ever heard it. "I need some time."

"Take all the time you need," Jared said as gently as he could. "Someone's got to watch your back. I'll be right here."

The look Jensen gave him was one he would never forget. It was sorrow and heartache and resignation all in one, shot through with gratefulness and fear that had Jared wanting so badly to reach out and take Jensen in his arms that he had to clasp his hands behind his back to keep from doing it.

Instead, he looked back at Jensen with all the love and confidence he could project. When Jensen turned away, Jared blinked back the moisture that had somehow accumulated in his eyes and resumed scanning the street, determined to keep his word.

Nothing was going to happen to Jensen as long as he was here.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jensen never really knew how long he stood there, and when he asked Jared about it later, he didn't know, either. It was long enough for the winter sun, already slanting low in the sky, to fall behind the buildings that lined the narrow street. Long enough for his fingers to start to grow cold, because it was December, same as it had been when he and Sam were here. He tried to count the years, but instead had to rely on seeking out the date in his memory, and then he couldn't believe it when he realized four years had passed since he last stood on this street. 

Four years.

A year of grieving and learning to be Dean Winchester, two years of seeking revenge and fulfilling a whole lot of other people's goals along the way, and then the months of thinking he really _was_ Dean Winchester. Then having the life shocked back into him by the person he'd randomly chosen to be his hostage but who had somehow forgiven him for that and turned out to be the only man besides Sam that Jensen had ever loved.

Now, Jared was standing quietly on the narrow strip of stone that served as a sidewalk, blowing on his fingers for warmth, eyes never ceasing to look up and down the length of the street. Jensen felt the same pang he had on the plane while watching Jared, the same wonder that things had turned out the way they had and put this amazing man in his path who had saved him in so many different ways.

Jensen cleared his throat, and Jared's gaze snapped to him. "We should probably go in somewhere and warm up," he said, his voice sounding rough to his own ears.

"When you're ready," Jared said quietly.

He nodded. "It's not quite like I remember it," he said haltingly.

"No?" Jared tilted his head to the side, his expression a clear invitation to go on.

"No." Jensen stepped up beside him on the curb and pointed down the hill, toward the sea. "We were here to pick up something…I don't remember what. See the house with the blue shutters down there?" Jared nodded, and he went on, "The guy used the right code words, but he was kind of shifty, looking around and acting like he had somewhere else to be. And if that got my hackles up, then it sure as hell set off Sam's alarm bells. He grabbed the package and we took off. Didn't get much farther than that corner before we heard a gunshot." He pointed at the side street about twenty yards down the hill. 

Jared had moved closer to him, either for warmth or support. "Was it the guy who'd given you the package?"

"No, down the side street. He must have been told to keep us there long enough." Jensen shook his head. "We started running, and there was a car parked right about where we are, up on the curb. We ducked behind it, and then the shooting really started. At least three guys from down the hill, and it was sheer luck that the ones who came from up the hill missed me the first time they shot." He nodded at the narrow passageway across the street from them, a staircase rather than a street that descended out of sight. "I had hit one of them and Sam had hit two, but it was obvious that they had all day and we didn't. So he told me he'd cover me and to make a run for it and he'd be right behind."

He closed his eyes, remembering the quick kiss Sam had given him and then his own understanding, many years later, that it had been Sam's goodbye. He felt Jared's arm come around him, and he gladly turned into it, seeking warmth and comfort as he buried his face in Jared's neck. 

For a moment, Jensen just breathed, letting the fear and the sorrow and the anger bleed through him, one into the other. Jared didn't say anything to him, any platitudes or promises, just held him and let him be. It was the best thing he could have done, and Jensen added one more thing to the list of what he already owed Jared.

When he finally drew back, he sniffed and surreptitiously wiped his eyes. "I waited for the longest time to come back, until everything was silent. He was there, just—laid out across the street, so still. I knew as soon as I saw him, Jay, I knew it." He shook his head. "And it didn't take long before I was so _angry_ , and then anger was all that I had."

"And that was what led you to create Dean Winchester," Jared said. His own eyes were slightly red, and his sniff was from more than the cold.

Jensen nodded. "I think it was something you said the other day that made me realize it, though." He smoothed down the lapels of Jared's jacket, rumpled from where he'd been crushing them a moment ago. "I was also angry at him. At Sam. For making a choice for me, and for taking away that same choice from me."

Jared's forehead was furrowed. "For saving your life?"

"For giving up his life for mine. He knew that's what he was doing. He made the choice that I would be the one to walk away and live, without letting me decide."

"He loved you," Jared said with a small shrug.

Jensen drew in a slow breath. "I guess I don't understand why you're not mad at me for the same thing."

"I don't understand." The grooves in Jared's forehead were deeper now, eyes searching Jensen's.

"You said you made your own choices to stay with me all along. But that isn't true. I told you it wasn't safe any other way. I told you what would happen to your sister if you went to the authorities. I never really gave you a choice."

"Stop." Jared gently put his fingers over Jensen's lips. "The one thing I was ever mad at you for was when you told me you were going to leave me on the train. _That_ was making a decision for me, Jensen. That was thinking that you knew better than me about what to do with my own life." He waited until Jensen gave him a grudging nod and then went on, "I didn't have to stay with you from the moment you saved me at the bridge. Every time, Jen, _every time_ , I have chosen to be with you. Every day, I am still choosing to be with you." He caressed Jensen's cheek with the backs of his fingers. "I get why you were mad at him, or maybe you still are, I don't know. But you and I are not you and him. I'm not Sam. I'm me."

"I know." Jensen reached up and trapped Jared's hand against his face, not sure whose skin was colder in the chill evening air. "And I'm so grateful for who you are, Jay. You have no idea."

Jared's eyes softened. "Gimme some time, and I can figure it out."

They leaned forward at the same time, lips meeting in a kiss that was more comforting than anything Jensen could have expected on this dark street. He clutched Jared's hand in his until he was sure it must have been painful, but Jared didn't make a sound, only slanted his lips against Jensen's and kissed him harder. Jensen's hands were cold, his toes too, but there was warmth growing inside of him that was beginning to fill the space that had been ripped open the last time he stood on this street.

When they broke apart, Jared gave him a small smile and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "C'mon, let's go warm up."

"Sounds good." There was a lot more he wanted to say to Jared, but the surety was settling in that he would, in fact, get the chance to do that. That they would have all of the time they needed to say what needed to be said, and sometimes, like now, to not say anything at all.

He turned his back on the site that had haunted his dreams, taking Jared's hand in his as they went down the street. When they reached the side street which they'd taken up from the port, Jensen hesitated as they rounded the corner. He looked back up, seeing the battered cobblestones white and clean, no spill of blood staining them, etching the scene firmly in his memory as it was and not as his nightmares had made him see it.

Then Jensen lifted a hand and whispered, "Goodbye."

Then he turned around and walked side-by-side with Jared down the narrow stairs to the boulevard below.


	27. Book 5 (Marseille), Chapter 3

The next morning dawned bright and clear, yesterday's chill replaced by more tolerable weather. Jared figured that it was the Mediterranean, after all, the same climate as L.A., and so a light jacket should've been enough. Standing around for almost an hour in the shade of the multi-story houses in the oldest part of town hadn't done much for keeping him warm, though.

Still, he gladly would have done it again if Jensen had asked, just to see the way his mood improved overnight. Last night, Jensen had barely finished eating a sandwich before falling into bed, the combination of jet lag and emotional exhaustion clearly doing him in. But today, it was only mid-morning, and already he'd smiled at Jared more times than he had in the whole previous week. Okay, so the previous week had involved them recovering in the hospital after nearly getting blown up, but still. There was a shadow that was lifting from Jensen's eyes—it wasn't gone all the way yet, but considering that it had been there ever since Jared met him, just seeing it lighten up was amazing. He was almost wishing they had come to Marseille sooner.

Of course, he was also wishing that they had come under less urgent circumstances, if only because he didn't want to think about _stealing from a goddamn museum_. Jensen's words on the plane aside, Jared was still more than a little uncomfortable with the idea. He knew they had no choice, unless by some miracle Alex's boss called and told them they had managed to find Alex and Terry, but that didn't make it right.

He sighed and stuffed his hands in his pockets, looking out over the sea. It was a clear turquoise, beautiful and deep, crashing against the base of the stone wall below him in the same soothing rhythm it did back home. Jared gave a half-smile, wondering when it was that he'd started to think of Morro Bay and Jensen as _home_. 

Behind him, traffic raced by on the road that edged the hill sweeping up from the sea. He was across the harbor from where they had spent yesterday afternoon, not the narrow, twisting streets of the old port neighborhood but red-tiled villas like queens looking out over the sea, the homes of the ship owners and merchants rather than the sailors. It was extremely picturesque, pastel-colored houses shining in the sun and gaily-painted fishing boats bobbing in the small inlet that cut in from the sea. 

The phone in Jared's pocket buzzed, and he quickly pulled it out. "Hello?"

"The dude's family made a fortune on soap. Can you believe it?"

Jared raised his eyebrows. "Soap?"

"Yeah." There were noises in the background that suggested Jensen was also outside. "Jacques Leveque, our museum owner. His family was one of the soap magnates of Marseille. I didn't even know there was such a thing. Anyway, he traveled around Europe after he finished school like a good little rich kid, but he was really hooked on the whole Wild West mythos." Jensen's voice was taking on a cadence like he was reading from a book, and Jared leaned against the wall, enjoying the richness of Jensen's voice. "When he was older, he sailed for America and fulfilled his dream of riding the train across the American West. He sought out and brought home with him all of the memorabilia he could find: pistols, Western saddles, spurs and cowboy hats, and buffalo hides."

"And the knife?" Jared asked.

"It's only mentioned briefly in the catalog, but I saw it on display."

"So what do you think?" They'd agreed that sending Jensen in alone to scope out the museum was the best idea, given how conspicuous Jared's height made him and that Jensen knew best what to look for to see if Esther's information was accurate.

"I'll tell you when I get there."

Jared pursed his lips. It probably made sense not to discuss plans for a museum heist out in public, but he still hated to wait. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Goddamn it, he was helping to plan a fucking _museum heist_. "Is it going to work?"

"Should be fine. I'll meet you back at the apartment in half an hour." With that, Jensen hung up.

Jared put away his phone and stared out over the water again. "This better work," he muttered to no one and then straightened up and started to walk back to the apartment.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It took about an hour to go over everything Jensen had seen while casing the museum. All the while, Jared stood next to him, close enough to touch, and it made Jensen realize just how long it had been since they had really touched. He inhaled Jared's scent surreptitiously as he pointed out features of the museum on the blueprints Esther had sent by courier, wondering if it was going to be at all difficult to get Jared to spend some time with him that afternoon. He started convincing himself that Jared was standing closer to him than he had before, that his hand brushing Jensen's as he pointed out something on the plans wasn't a coincidence.

When they were done with their initial plans for the museum, Jared looked around the apartment, one hand coming up to run through his hair. He gave Jensen a sideways look, then turned toward the clock over the stove. "Guess we have some time till it gets dark, huh?"

The hopeful awkwardness in his voice was more than a little endearing. God, Jensen loved how much of a dork Jared could be sometimes. He said softly, "Looks like we finally have that time alone we've been talking about." He took one step forward, then another, eyes never leaving Jared's. "You got some idea of what to do with it?"

"Maybe," Jared said, his eyes dropping to Jensen's mouth. 

Jared was almost close enough to touch, and Jensen reached out to snag a belt loop and pull him closer. "This okay with you?" he asked, his other hand resting on Jared's hip.

"More than okay," Jared replied. "It's been a long time."

"Yeah, it has." Jensen reached up to smooth over the collar of Jared's flannel shirt. He let out a half-laugh. "Feels weird to be so deliberate about it, you know?"

Jared's lips curved into a relieved smile. "Yeah, it kinda does. Like, 'okay, it's time to take our clothes off now.'" 

"Well, I think it is." Jensen slid his hands down to the first button on Jared's shirt and started working them one at a time, hands perfectly steady even though the slow burn of arousal was already starting to work inside of him. It _had_ been too long, and even if most of that was for perfectly good reasons, some of it was due to stubbornness and pride, and Jensen had had enough of that. 

He had Jared down to his plain white t-shirt when Jared's long fingers closed over his. "My turn," he said softly, fingers caressing Jensen's.

The next breath Jensen drew in was a lot shakier, but he nodded and let his hands fall to his sides. The henley Jensen was wearing didn't really need the buttons undone, but Jared did it anyway, fingers brushing the skin underneath with each one. When he drew the shirt off, Jensen stood there bare-chested in the entryway, any lingering chill from being outside banished by the heat in Jared's eyes.

He put a hand on Jared's bicep. "C'mon," he said, nudging Jared toward the bedroom. 

The bed wasn't huge, but last night they had been too tired to care, and Jensen wasn't planning on the two of them taking up much room between them. Jared's hands were at Jensen's fly before they stopped moving, big hands capably pulling off his pants with an eagerness Jensen had missed.

He slid his fingers under Jared's t-shirt, seeking out warm skin. As he started to push the thin shirt higher, Jared moved back a little, breaking their touch.

Jensen cocked his head as he looked up at Jared. "What is it, Jay?"

There was the tiniest movement of Jared's shoulders, and he pulled his lower lip into his mouth, eyes not meeting Jensen's. 

Jensen laid his hands on Jared's clothed shoulders, ready to give all the reassurance he needed. "I don't care if you have marks on you," he said in a low voice. "I don't care if you have scars. God knows I've got enough of them myself."

Jared shook his head, bangs hiding his eyes. "Not that," he said quietly. Then he grimaced. "Maybe it was that, at first. But…I don't know…it's like if I don't have a shirt on, and I feel the air on my skin, it kinda makes me feel like I'm in that basement again."

Jensen inhaled sharply. He hadn't even thought of that. Jared looked up at the sound, and Jensen let all of the anger and sorrow that he was feeling bleed through in his gaze. He cupped Jared's cheek with one hand. "Why don't you get under the covers, and I'll make sure you stay warm."

In another situation, he might have delivered that line with waggling eyebrows or a leer, but here he meant it a completely different way. Jared seemed to understand from the way the hesitation on his face dissolved into relief. He gave Jensen a swift, hard kiss, and then backed away from him, shedding his shirt and jeans before getting into bed and pulling the sheet and comforter over himself, right up to his shoulders.

Jensen was already in his briefs, and he circled around to the other side of the bed. As he went past the window, he pulled apart the sheer curtains enough to leave an opening the width of his body. The room had already been bright from the midafternoon sunlight, but the opening allowed a thick stripe of light to pour in and fall across the bed. 

"What are you doing?" Jared asked nervously.

Jensen smiled and slid into bed beside him. "It's okay, it's not a latent exhibitionist streak. We're on the twentieth floor." He nodded over to indicate that all they could see from the bed was sky. Then he ran a hand over Jared's shoulder, bathed in the sunbeam. "It's nice to feel the warmth of the sun, that's all."

Jared stared back at him, eyes wide and soft. Finally, he murmured, "God, Jensen," and dove at him quickly enough to take even Jensen by surprise.

Jensen might have been out of the field for a while, but the instinct he had cultivated all those years as Dean Winchester was still to keep from being overpowered. But this was _Jared_. So even if it took some mental effort, Jensen could rein in his instincts and let Jared loom over him, let Jared hold him down and take control, at least for now. Jared pinned him to the mattress, kissing him hard and fast and full while his long legs caged Jensen's beneath the sheets and his hands trapped Jensen's wrists on either side of his head.

Besides, it wasn't like he minded Jared's warm bulk on top of him, skin on skin from head to foot and almost everywhere in between, mouth warm on his before breaking away to suck at the underside of his jaw. Jensen craned his head back to give Jared all the room he needed, and oh _God_ , what he was doing with his lips and tongue right now was incredible.

He was half-consciously bucking his hips up, rubbing his still-clothed erection against Jared's, starting to get lost in the heat and the friction, when Jared suddenly drew back, letting the covers fall away to the end of the bed. Jensen blinked up at him, confused at the sudden lack of stimulation.

Jared shrugged. "Getting kind of warm in here," he said with a shy smile, and Jensen's heart soared. 

Grinning back at him, Jensen said, "Well, we _are_ still wearing clothes."

"Yeah." Jared bit his lip. Then he reached out and almost casually started to pull down Jensen's briefs with one finger, nail scraping lightly over Jensen's hipbone and sending a shiver out from the spot like ripples from a stone dropping into a pond. 

Impatiently, Jensen grabbed his underwear and yanked it off, nearly kneeing Jared in the groin as he did so. Jared threw back his head and laughed, long and loud, and it was the most beautiful thing Jensen had seen in a long, long time.

When Jared looked back down, his eyes darkened as they took in Jensen's naked form, spread out over the bed, cock hard and curving toward his belly. "God, you're amazing," he murmured, fingertips tracing lightly down Jensen's flank and over his hips. He sat back on his haunches, the bulge at the front of his boxers practically straining the fabric. 

Jensen reached out and cupped that bulge, and Jared's eyes almost rolled back in his head. "C'mon," Jensen said, tugging at the waistband.

"So bossy," Jared complained, but he rolled over onto his side and shimmied off his boxers, looking for a moment like he wanted to pull the covers over himself again.

Jensen didn't want to spring at him, but he didn't want Jared to be shy, either, so he started by leaning closer until their lips met. When he was sure that Jared was getting lost in the kiss, mouth pulling and seeking against his, he slowly rolled forward until their bodies met, nothing but skin and warmth and the oh-God-so-good drag of their cocks beside each other as Jared let out a low, rumbling moan that Jensen could feel through his chest.

It had been a long time, and Jensen had no doubt that if he just started rutting against the cut of Jared's hip, this would be over really quickly. That wasn't what he wanted, though, and so he pulled his hips back and shifted his weight until he was leaning over Jared, never stopping their kiss. His hand was roaming through Jared's hair, over his face, sweeping down his neck and back up again, letting Jared know he was cherished and protected and so very loved. 

Jared broke off, panting for air, sweat shimmering on his forehead. "Jen," he whispered. "Jen, can you—please?"

"What, Jay?" He dropped his head down, nuzzling at the underside of Jared's jaw, and Jared lifted his head back with a breathy groan. Ignoring the stubble against his lips, Jensen licked and kissed and sucked, interspersed with quiet, "Hmm?"s as Jared continued to not answer his question.

"Not fair," Jared laughed, even as he arched his neck to give Jensen more room. "You just—God, I can't even think."

"Then I must be doing a good job," Jensen murmured, lightly nipping at Jared's earlobe before pulling it into his mouth for a long, wet suck.

"Ohhh," Jared sighed out. His hands were roaming Jensen's flanks, up and down in the kind of mindless motion that indicated he wasn't really paying attention to what he was touching. "Jensen, you—I want you to fuck me."

"You sure, Jay?" It wasn't like they didn't switch off, but Jensen knew that in Jared's place, he'd rather have the control of being the one on top.

"I'm sure." Jared's hands came to rest on Jensen's hips, fingers curving over his ass. He wasn't hesitant any longer as he looked up at Jensen, gaze steady and challenging. "Want to feel you all over, everywhere."

"Not gonna argue with that." Jensen ran his hand over Jared's chest. "You got stuff?"

"In the travel case in the bathroom." 

Jensen dropped a quick kiss on his lips and rolled off of him to grab the supplies. He came back to see Jared stretching like a big cat. The sunbeam spread over his broad chest highlighted the planes and valleys of his taut stomach and firm muscles, and Jensen's mouth watered at the sight.

At least, until he caught sight of the faint red marks against Jared's tanned skin. They were barely noticeable, but once Jensen saw them, they stood out in bold relief, reminders of what he hadn't been able to prevent from happening to Jared.

He realized his hand was clenched around the strip of condoms, and when he looked up, Jared was eyeing him with something like trepidation. Jared's hands had been up around his ears in loose fists as he stretched, but now he started to move them down as if to cover himself.

"Don't." Jensen spoke quietly, but it still rang out in the room. 

Jared froze, half-open hands somewhere around his shoulders.

Jensen tossed the condoms and lube onto the bed and climbed over Jared, taking his hands in his. "D'you mind if I look at you?" he asked quietly, searching Jared's eyes.

He saw the bob of Jared's throat as he swallowed. "No," Jared said quickly, gaze dropping away to run down Jensen's body.

"Hey." Jensen nudged the underside of Jared's chin until he was looking at him again. "Tell me the truth, okay?"

Jared gave a minute flinch. "Sorry." His free hand came to rest on Jensen's thigh. "Maybe the scars still bother me, too."

Jensen didn't bother pointing out that Jared's hand was resting about an inch from the pink line that sliced over Jensen's femoral artery, the one whose origins were still unknown to him. Even Alex hadn't been able to explain it. He knew there was still a puckered scar on his torso where the Panther's bullet had hit him in Washington, not to mention the marks from the earlier bullets the same man had put into him. He didn't realize he was self-consciously tracing the furrow over his right ear where one of those bullets had taken away his memories until Jared reached up and captured his hand.

At that, Jensen gave Jared a lopsided, half-smile. "Does it bother you? All the scars that I've got?"

Jared shook his head. His fingers roamed over Jensen's torso, tracing faded white lines and circling former bullet holes. "They're all amazing. They all got you here."

Jensen's smile turned more even at that. "That's kinda how I feel." He traced one of the faded red lines on Jared's torso, pleased when he didn't even flinch. Feeling bolder, he leaned down and pressed a kiss over it, then another. Jared had gone still under him, and so he touched the tip of his tongue to Jared's skin. When that pulled forth a shudder, he reached up to flick a nipple, sucking gently at the skin over Jared's ribs. 

Jared's hips shifted beneath him, and that was enough of a response. Jensen reached for the lube, deciding it was time for more important things. Discussions about their scars—outside and inside—could wait for another day. Right now, he was going to do as Jared had asked him to do, and the rest of the world could wait. 

His first finger went into Jared slowly and carefully, slicked up to the point of dripping. Jared closed his eyes, and Jensen ran a gentle hand over his thigh as he eased in and out. 

After a moment, Jared reached for the lube bottle. To Jensen's surprise, he drizzled some over his own finger before reaching down and firmly pushing his finger in beside Jensen's. The sudden tightness around Jensen's finger was shocking enough, it had to be almost painful for Jared. But Jared's eyes were wide open, breath coming through his parted lips in soft pants as his hips started to rock up into them both.

"God, Jay," Jensen breathed. He loved the sensation of Jared's finger sliding beside his, both of them moving together to work him open. Jared's cock was glistening at the tip, and Jensen bent forward to lick off the sharp saltiness. Instantly, Jared's hips bucked up as he groaned, and he started to work a second finger alongside Jensen's. "Yeah," he breathed out, sweat now shimmering along his chest as well as his face. "Almost ready for you, Jen."

"Good," Jensen murmured, swiping his tongue over Jared's cock again and drawing out another groan. "Can't wait to get inside and feel you."

"Yeah." Jared squirmed underneath him and then pulled out his fingers with a wet squelch. "C'mon, let's go."

Jensen raised an eyebrow in inquiry, but Jared was already tearing open a condom wrapper. At the touch of Jared's hand, he bit his tongue hard to keep from being overwhelmed right then and there. "Not gonna take long," he grunted, shuddering as Jared rolled the condom up his length.

"Good." Jared drizzled lube over his cock and gave him a couple of pumps that had Jensen's hips shooting forward. "'Cause I want it now."

"Shit," Jensen breathed out. There wasn't much he loved more than an eager Jared, and he shifted into place, pulling on Jared's thigh to spread him open nice and wide. Jared acquiesced easily, wrapping his legs around Jensen's waist and pulling him forward.

Jensen took his cock in one hand and teased Jared for a moment, teased them both by tracing Jared's rim with his head, sensitive flesh separated only by a thin barrier. He wasn't surprised when Jared let out a low growl and dug his heel into Jensen's lower back, and he wasn't complaining when he started the long, slow thrust forward, thighs straining as he held back from taking Jared with the quick, full movement that he wanted to use. There was a twinge of pain from the burn on his leg, but it only made the pleasure that much sweeter.

Jared was tight around him, the lines of his arms and shoulders tense at first. He looked up at Jensen, trust and affection written all over his face, and Jensen could feel him relax bit by bit as Jensen continued to ease inside of him. When he was all the way in, Jensen leaned forward and captured Jared's lips, kissing him slow and deep and marveling at the feeling of their joined bodies.

"Move already," Jared muttered, grabbing a handful of his ass.

Jensen was all too happy to oblige.

It wasn't over as quickly as he had feared it would be, despite Jared's welcoming heat around him and the blissful expression on his face as Jensen thrust into him, over and over again. It wasn't that he had to school his thoughts to stave off orgasm, either; it was just so goddamn good to be here, surrounded by and surrounding Jared, smelling their bodies and feeling their sweat-laced skin and watching the deep flush over Jared's chest as his cock rubbed between them. Jensen strained to lean close enough to kiss, and Jared raised his head to meet him halfway, tongue plunging into Jensen's mouth in rhythm with the way their bodies were moving.

Finally, Jensen could feel the oncoming rush, hips moving faster as he chased the inevitable. Jared was grunting with every thrust, higher and higher pitched, and Jensen loved that he could read him so well that he knew exactly how close he was. He shifted back to change his angle, his next stroke rubbing inside of Jared just the right way, and Jared shivered in response. "Love you," Jared gasped out, hands tightening on Jensen's hips, back arching and body starting to tense.

"Love you, too," Jensen murmured, low and intense. "God, I love you."

Jared's eyes went wide, and Jensen realized it was the first time he'd said it as an automatic response like that. He grinned, happiness filling him up right alongside the arousal, and he dipped his head to look right into Jared's eyes. "I love you, Jared Padalecki."

Jared gasped, and then he was gone, eyes slamming shut and body arching nearly off the bed as he came. He clenched around Jensen as his hips bucked, and Jensen couldn't hold back, wildly thrusting three or four more times before crying out and going still, buried in Jared to the hilt, mouth open on Jared's chest as pleasure and desire washed over him in waves.

His legs were shaky when he came back to himself, and he pulled out of Jared so he could collapse at his side, limbs loose and relaxed. "Awesome," he muttered, twining a hand in Jared's sweaty hair.

Jared's sleepy chuckle warmed him as much as the sunlight on his back. "Yes, we are," Jared said, caressing Jensen's stomach where it was streaked with Jared's come. Then his fingers went still. "I love you, too, Jensen Ackles." 

Jensen lifted his head enough to catch Jared's eye. "We're gonna get your name back," he said, aware of the weight of his words. "Yours and mine. I promise you that."

"I know." Jared pressed a kiss to his forehead. "Let's enjoy the afterglow first, hmm?"

Jensen felt the grin spreading over his face. "Yeah, we can do that."

He put his head down on Jared's chest and let the warmth of the sun and the lassitude of his satisfied body lull him into sleep.


	28. Book 5 (Marseille), Chapter 4

Jared woke up and stretched luxuriously. He hadn't felt this relaxed in long time, and it wasn't only from the physical release. Not that that hadn't been awesome—they'd been together long enough that Jensen knew exactly how to touch him, and a pleasurable shiver ran over him at the memory of Jensen's hands and mouth and cock bringing him up to the edge and over it in an amazing crescendo.

No, Jensen also knew exactly what to say to him. He understood what Jared was really afraid of, beyond what Jared was willing to admit, and he knew how to diffuse that fear with the right words or sometimes just the right gestures. He'd forgotten that about Jensen, or maybe he hadn't even wanted to remember it while he was wallowing in his hurt and anger over what had happened in Sydney. Now, he knew that if he'd let Jensen in earlier, a lot of that hurt would never have been there in the first place.

Jared shook his head. No use dwelling on that now. It felt like they were back together after a long period of time apart, even if they'd been physically together almost the entire time. He was looking forward to experiencing that closeness again.

He bounded out of bed and threw on his boxers and t-shirt. The curtains were drawn, the sky dark beyond them. He looked at the clock and was surprised to realize he'd slept the afternoon away. Must have been jet lag, he thought as he rounded the corner into the main room.

Jensen was standing over the dining table, papers and plans still spread out all over it. "Hi," Jared said, shuffling up behind him and putting his arms around him, resting his head on Jensen's shoulder. "Whatcha doin'?"

Jensen turned his head, stubble scraping against Jared's equally-rough cheek until it was replaced by the almost shocking smoothness of his lips. "Mmmm," he said, kissing Jared slowly and thoroughly enough that Jared was ready to haul him back to bed right then and there. "Right now, I'm feelin' pretty good."

"I bet." Jared grinned and gave him a squeeze. "Wanna do it again?"

The corners of Jensen's eyes crinkled as he grinned in response. "So much, you have no idea." He pressed another lingering kiss to Jared's lips before turning around in the circle of his arms. "But we've got business to take care of."

"Yeah, I guess we do." Jared let out a sigh, his euphoria starting to slide away. "Sorry, I'd—I don't think I'd forgotten about it, exactly, but it wasn't the first thing on my mind, when really it's the whole reason we're here."

"It's all right, Jay." Jensen patted Jared's hand where it rested over his stomach. He'd put his henley back on, the fabric worn and soft beneath Jared's fingers. "Can't do anything more until later tonight, anyway."

Jared swallowed. "So you're still thinking tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow night, yeah." Jensen looked over his shoulder at him. "You still all right with this?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." Jared waved a hand in the air. "I mean, I'm just standing on the street and watching for trouble, right? I can do that, no problem." 

"Okay." Jensen looked at him closely, his gaze even more intense than usual from only inches away. "You're _sure_."

"I am. I mean, I thought about it this morning while I was waiting for you to call, and it's not like we're hurting anybody. People who go to the museum are still going to see that." He pointed at the duffle bag on the sofa, where the tip of the blade of the fake knife was barely visible. "And museums put up replicas all the time when they don't want the real thing to be damaged, or when it's being cleaned or something."

"You've thought about this a lot," Jensen said, turning around so that Jared's arms fell away from him.

"Yeah, I guess I have." Jared straightened up. "And I'm okay with it. Really."

"All right." Jensen looked at him for another moment and then started stacking up the papers on the table. "Hey, why don't we go get some dinner? The seafood is fabulous here, and there's a little restaurant around the corner that's supposed to be really good."

Jared's stomach chose that moment to rumble, and he gave Jensen a sheepish grin. "Sounds like that would be a good idea."

Jensen smiled and stacked the papers on one corner of the table. "Great."

They walked a short distance to a small, cozy-looking restaurant with a tiny terrace outside and wide glass-paned doors that would probably be open to the street in warmer weather. Bright magenta bougainvillea cascaded down over the archway over the cheery blue front door. There was a chalkboard menu posted outside. 

Inside, the restaurant was darker than Jared had expected, but thick white pillar candles burned at every table, casting a warm glow throughout the single room. There were a few other diners, but the table they were shown to was by itself. Once they were seated, Jared didn't even pick up the menu. Instead, he said to Jensen, "Order me something good."

Jensen gave him a quick smile, eyes crinkling in the candlelight. He absently ran his tongue over his upper lip as he read the menu, and Jared took a drink of water to distract himself. 

Once the waiter had taken their order and brought back a bottle of white wine, Jared settled back in his seat and lifted his glass. "To us."

A small smile curled the corners of Jensen's mouth, the warmth in his eyes shading into heat, and Jared knew he wasn't the only one remembering how they'd spent their afternoon. "To us," he echoed.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The following night, Jensen stood on a street corner in the seventh arrondissement of Marseille, shrugging his shoulders to make sure the small knapsack he carried was secure on his back. It had been dark for several hours, and most passersby were gone. It was getting chilly to be standing around doing nothing, but they'd had to wait until traffic dropped off. "Ready to go," he said into the phone, looking down the hill toward where Jared was waiting at the sea wall again.

"All set," Jared's voice came through the phone. "One hour, right?"

"That's what I expect." Jensen squinted up the narrow street on which he stood. Between the moonlight and the streetlights, he could distinguish the red-tiled roof that belonged to the museum in the middle of the houses blanketing the hillside. The museum was actually just another one of those houses, the former home of the Leveque family before they donated the building and its unusual contents to the city to become a museum. On the bright side, that meant the knife they were after wasn't in a large, carefully guarded building like he had worried when Esther first mentioned it was in a museum. 

On the other hand, it meant they were two guys lurking in the middle of a residential neighborhood, trying not to look conspicuous. Jared's height made the latter a lost cause, and so Jensen had stationed him down on the main street because he'd look less out of place loitering there than on a narrow side street. 

"Okay, see you on the other side," Jared said, and then he was gone.

Jensen stuffed his phone in his back pocket and looked up the hill. They'd discussed cutting the power to get rid of the alarms, but a single house going dark in the middle of the neighborhood might have looked suspicious. After dinner last night, they'd wandered hand in hand through the neighborhood, seemingly two lovers out for a stroll, but really taking in the situation and plotting escape routes if necessary. Their excursion had shown them only a single museum guard who was as interested in his smart phone as he was in patrolling the entrances. Jensen was confident he could time it right to sneak past him, and then it would be a matter of getting to the knife, swapping it with the replica, and getting out.

The other reason Jared was waiting several streets away was to give a warning of any approaching police in case there was a silent alarm they didn't know about. Jensen had the further motive in mind that if things went south, Jared would be well positioned to get the fuck out of there, but he hadn't voiced that one out loud. As much as things had improved between them in the last couple of days, he didn't want to risk it with anything that sounded like a suggestion that Jared couldn't handle himself. He'd only grudgingly accepted Jensen putting him some distance away from the museum, even though Jared had been the one to think of how out of place he looked. Neither of them were exactly dressed like a typical _Marseillais_ , but Jensen was better at blending in with the background.

He paused in the overhang of a garage, watching down the street as the museum guard circled the front of the building. The houses were shorter here than in the old port area, only one or two stories, and the street was wide enough for a row of parked cars next to the curb. The claustrophobic feeling of the city center was gone, and Jensen found himself thinking that it was a shame they weren't going to get to spend any time in Marseille.

The guard made two more passes before Jensen judged it was a regular enough patrol to be able to slip past. He waited until the guard disappeared around the near corner and then made his move, slipping down the quiet streets and huddling in the shadow of a low brick wall across the street from his goal. 

The guard went by one more time, never even looking in Jensen's direction. The instant he was gone, Jensen was moving up the steps to a green gate set into the stucco wall that circled the property. He'd noted the type of lock earlier, and it was the work of a few seconds to pop it loose.

He eased the gate open, holding his breath and waiting for the slightest squeak of the hinges. There was no sound, though, and he slipped inside and closed it silently. Then he waited until he heard the guard's footsteps move past without stopping, and he grinned to himself. One hurdle down.

The property sloped upwards from the gate through a well-kept garden. The front entrance of the museum was on another street up the hill, but Jensen preferred to go in through the back. In his tour of the place yesterday morning, he'd carefully noted the location of the video cameras around the garden and exterior of the house, then sneaked a quick look at the guard's station inside the museum to verify there were only four cameras.

Piece of cake.

As he made his way up through the garden, Jensen remembered another nighttime expedition like this one, sneaking into the grounds of an embassy to obtain a document that couldn't be sent through official channels. Sam had been with him, he remembered that much, and he was pretty sure it had been in Paris. He had been surprised to find over the last couple of days that he was remembering more and more of his old life, like fragments washing up after a shipwreck. Determinedly _not_ thinking about Sam's death for so long had apparently blocked out a lot of other things that he'd blamed on his head injury, not his emotional state. 

Jensen shook his head. There would be time to ruminate about stuff like this once he had the knife and they were on the plane. No, once they were back in the States and Alex and Terry were safe and sound. 

Once he and Jared were home again.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It was almost one in the morning when Jared's phone vibrated quietly. Five minutes before the time when he would officially start worrying. He snatched up the phone. "Jen?"

"Go back to the apartment," Jensen said. "Pack up and I'll meet you at the train station. We're fine."

Jared let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Understood," he said, and then put away the phone.

The walk along the cornice took about twenty minutes the other times Jared had made it, but this time it took only fifteen. It was late enough and chilly enough that hurrying didn't look out of place, although he was careful to keep to a quick walk lest someone later make a connection to a theft at the museum. 

If anyone even noticed the theft, that was. That morning, he'd examined the replica of the knife they'd brought with them. To his untrained eyes, he didn't know how anyone could tell by looking that it didn't date back to the 1800s: the blade had nicks in a few places, the handle was worn, and the serrated blade had flecks of rust in the upper edges of its curves. At least Jared hoped it was rust. The point was, if Jensen made the switch undetected, it was quite likely that no one would ever know that this single object in an obscure museum in a second-tier city in France wasn't what the sign outside its display case said it was. Of course, the way their luck had been going lately, some scholar was going to decide to do a study of Jacques Leveque's Wild West collection and find that not everything was what it appeared to be. 

Jared shook his head at himself and walked faster. At some point, things _had_ to start going right for them. Maybe this was that point.

They'd already packed up their belongings before heading out to the museum in case their departure had to be in a hurry. Jared's passport was in his jacket in case they were in a _real_ hurry, but thankfully that didn't seem to be the case. He grabbed Jensen's duffle and his own backpack and was back out the door in five minutes, leaving the key in the room as they'd been instructed.

The train station was another twenty-minute walk away, but it was too late for the metro to be running. Jared checked his phone to make sure there were no other messages from Jensen and trudged on, nerves prickling. If something went wrong at the last minute, if Jensen had been caught after all, there was no way Jared would know. He didn't even know where the Ravenswood office was in Marseille, not that they would probably be open this time of night, although if it was anything like Barcelona, they probably had people watching in case anyone so much as looked at their front door funny. Not that Jensen would want him to call on them, but if he had nowhere else to go—

The phone in his pocket buzzed, and Jared jumped. The young couple walking toward him on the sidewalk gave him a wide berth, and he realized his frantic thoughts must have transferred into his expression. "Yeah?" he said into the phone. 

"Where are you?"

"Almost there." The illuminated bulk of the train station was looming over the lower buildings a few blocks away. "Where are you?"

"Waiting inside. Take a cab from the front of the train station and tell them to go to the airport, to the _vol nolisé_. Got that?"

"The what?" Jared frowned.

Jensen repeated the phrase more slowly. "Charter flight, private flight, whatever. It's not the main terminal, that's the important part. I'll meet you there in an hour."

"Jen, what…?" Jared was in front of the train station by that point, and he looked up at the building, the nerves in his gut growing sharper. "What's going on? I thought we were going to meet up here."

"Nothing's going on, just taking precautions." Jensen's voice dropped. "I swear, Jay, that's all. This is not Paris, okay? I'll be right behind you."

Jared let out a breath. There Jensen went again, knowing exactly what to say. He didn't have to worry about Jensen doing something stupid and leaving him behind for what he thought was his own good. Jensen was going to be right behind him, and all Jared had to do was navigate a cab ride. "All right," he said into the phone. "I'll see you soon."

It was a quiet ride out to the airport, the driver's confusion at Jared wanting to make the trip at a time when no planes would be flying apparently alleviated by Jared's repetition of Jensen's phrase over and over. He clutched the handles of both of their bags, not wanting to let either out of his sight even if all they held was clothing. It was all too easy to remember the last time he'd been separated from Jensen in Europe, forced away from him in the middle of a public square and kidnapped by Ravenswood, then persuading them too late that Jensen was still a good guy and having to make the flight back to the U.S. with only Alex, scared that he'd never see Jensen again.

Jared took a deep breath as they exited the motorway and started circling around the airport. Jensen would be right behind him, and they'd be out of here in no time. 

The driver deposited Jared at a small, low-slung concrete building. There was a man in a red vest and black pants waiting to open the taxi door. "Jacob Hanson?" he asked. 

Jared nodded, relieved to hear the familiar alias. "Yes. Um, _oui_."

The man smiled. "English is fine," he said in a slight French accent. "Your partner will be here soon, and I understand that you will be ready to take off once he arrives, yes?"

"Um, yes." Jared figured that was better than saying the truth, which was that he had absolutely no idea. He hadn't expected to make this part of the journey by himself, but apparently Jensen had taken care of everything anyway.

He was shown through a lounge area with plush leather seats and quiet background music, a far cry from any airport terminal Jared had ever been through. His guide kept going, through two sets of doors and out onto the tarmac.

Jared blinked up at the set of stairs they'd stopped next to, leading up to a jet aircraft that he recognized as a 757. It was painted white, but there was a small gothic R below the pilot's window that was thankfully familiar, and he felt some of the tension leave his shoulders. 

"You may board, Monsieur." 

"That's it?" Jared asked. He hadn't even taken his passport out of his pocket.

"You are trusted passengers," the man said with an incline of his head and a small smile. "I wish you a pleasant flight."

On the plane, there was an equally polite flight attendant to stow his bags and show him to a seat. It wasn't the same plane on which he'd flown home with Alex almost a year ago, but it was similar: only a handful of seats for the size of the plane, multiple seating areas with desks and padded chairs instead of the typical airline seats. Jared wondered if there was a bed in the back, then considered the likelihood of having enough privacy to do anything more than sleep in that bed.

It seemed like he had only just sat down when there was a noise near the front door of the plane, and he stood up to look. Jensen was boarding, giving Jared a big grin as he held up his knapsack. "One sec," he said, nodding toward the cockpit.

"Sure," Jared said with an equally large grin. He could wait as long as it took now, seeing Jensen and knowing that he really was there. 

It took only a few minutes before Jensen was dropping into the seat next to him, thigh pressed warmly against Jared's. "Hi," he said, leaning over for a kiss.

"Mmmm," Jared returned, losing himself in Jensen's mouth for a moment. "Everything okay?"

"Everything's great." Jensen nodded toward the front of the plane. Outside, the whine of the engines was starting up. "We'll have to stop somewhere on the East Coast to refuel, but I assume we'll be on to California after that. Once we're in the air, I'll contact San Francisco and tell them we have the knife, and we'll decide where we're going to meet Esther."

"Good." Jared sat back in his seat and took Jensen's hand in his, closing his eyes. He was exhausted, not only because it was after two in the morning but because of the unexpected emotional rollercoaster of the last hour. "Then we can go home, right?"

Jensen didn't answer right away, and Jared finally rolled his head to the side and cracked his eyes open. Jensen was staring at him with such a fond look that Jared felt warm all the way down to his toes. He gave Jensen a shy smile. "What?"

Leaning forward, Jensen kissed him slowly and tenderly, one hand carding through his hair and making Jared want to purr. When he pulled back, he said huskily, "Yeah, Jay. Then we can go home."


	29. Book 5 (Marseille), Chapter 5

Jared had been pleased to see the bed in the back room of the plane, tumbling into it and sleeping the sleep of the dead within minutes. Jensen watched him fondly for a moment, thinking of how much better Jared had been sleeping the last couple of days. He knew that his own sleep had been much less troubled, despite the tension of getting into the museum and the worry in the back of his head about what was going to happen once they got back to the States. Still, it was like his unconscious mind was more settled, and it wasn't too hard to figure out why.

He'd watched the lights of Marseille recede as the plane took off and circled over the city on its flight path toward the Atlantic. He could remember the last time he'd left here, grief-stricken and angry, already planning what was later to become Dean Winchester. The thought of ever returning to Marseille again had been impossible to consider, and there had even been a moment after Esther made her demand when he'd considered saying no, or asking if there wasn't anything else they could get instead.

It was Jared who had changed his mind, probably without even knowing it. Jared, with his quiet acceptance that they were going back out into the field, even after all that he had been through and was still trying to recover from. It had made Jensen realize that he _did_ have the strength to do this, through Jared if not through himself. Then, of course, the other shoe had dropped once they found out Alex and Terry were being held as hostages and that they really had no choice. 

Even so, Jensen recognized now that he had deliberately, if subconsciously, led them to the Rue de Refuge. He'd thought he was avoiding anything that reminded him of his dreams, but instead they had ended up right at the spot where it had happened. Where Sam had died, and where Jensen had finally accepted that while Sam might have taken the choice away from him as to who would live and who would die, he had made the choice that _Jensen_ would live. And even if he'd spent much of the last four years trying to live as someone else, he finally felt like he was ready to be himself again. 

"Mr. Enfield?"

Jensen blinked. "What is it?" he asked the flight attendant standing in the doorway.

She looked apologetically at the two of them, although Jared continued to sleep. "There's a phone call for you."

"I'll take it in the main lounge," Jensen said, and she nodded and withdrew. He swept the hair off Jared's forehead and brushed a soft kiss across his forehead before rising and following her.

The plane was passing through the typical mid-Atlantic bumps and troughs, and Jensen had to put a hand to the bulkhead to steady himself as he walked. The phone was in the middle of the conference table in the main area of the plane, and he took the receiver from the flight attendant. "Is it San Francisco?"

She shook her head. "They patched it through, but it's someone else."

Which meant she wasn't cleared to know who it was, which meant trouble. Jensen bit back a sigh as he raised the phone to his ear. "Hello?"

"Mr. Enfield." It was Esther Warren, her voice clear and sharp through the phone. "I understand you have my knife."

"It's not yours yet," Jensen said, sinking into one of the plush office chairs around the mahogany table.

"Are you changing your mind about your friends' safety?" 

"Not at all. Assuming they're still safe."

"They've spoken to your boss within the last hour." 

Jensen frowned. Then he realized she thought that he still worked for Ravenswood, which made sense, all things considered. "Good. So why are you calling me?"

"To tell you where you're headed. I understand that you'll be in California in approximately nine hours?"

"Maybe," Jensen replied warily.

"Mr. Enfield, I know how to use flight tracking software," Esther said. "There is only one flight that took off from southern France in the last two hours that is currently headed across the Atlantic. Given the size of the plane, you'll have to stop to refuel, but based on your current location, that means approximately nine hours to Santa Monica and another hour to my home."

Pursing his lips, Jensen thought for a moment. He was supposed to be intimidated by that, he was sure, but it didn't hold a candle to some of the times he'd been outgunned in the past. "Except we're not going to your home."

There was a short pause. Then Esther started, "May I remind you—?" 

"I don't think I need to remind _you_ of what happened to me and my people the last time we had an exchange in a place not of our own choosing. And I'm sure you've replaced Will by now with someone else who's more competent with explosives. You'll get what you want, Esther. But I'm not taking any chances about how you're getting it."

He held his breath, listening for any sound from the other side of the phone. Finally, Esther let out a huff of breath. "What did you have in mind?"

"We'll call you when we land," Jensen said. Not like she wouldn't know where that was, if she really was tracking their flight, but there would be enough possible locations in southern California for them to land that she wouldn't be able to keep them all covered. "Then we'll tell you where to meet us, with Alex and Terry. Then we'll do the exchange." 

"You're pushing your luck," Esther warned.

"Here's the thing, Esther." Jensen imagined staring at her across the table and let the expressions he would be feeling creep into his voice. "You said this knife has only recently become available, right? Seems to me that there might be other people out there who are interested in it. I'm sure with a few inquiries, I could make a pretty good deal for myself and leave you with nothing."

"Except the lives of your friends," she growled.

"You're assuming we don't already know where they are," Jensen said, putting more steel into his voice. "You've waded into something way over your head here. Now, I'm going to do the right thing and keep up my end of the bargain, but under my terms. And you should know that if you were to break your end, there is nowhere you could go that we wouldn't find you. Trust me on that."

There was silence again except for the whine of the engines outside. Then Esther said, "I know enough about your people to know that double-crossing them would be a very foolish thing to do. You don't have to worry about any traps being set this time."

"No, we don't. Because we'll meet where I tell you. In about ten hours, Esther. See you then."

He hung up before she could say anything else. Then he dropped his head into his hands, replaying everything he had just said and hoping he hadn't gone too far.

"Jen?"

He looked up to see Jared in the doorway, yawning and rubbing at his eyes. "Hey," Jensen said, rising from his seat. "I'm sorry, did I wake you up?"

Jared shrugged a shoulder. "I don't know. Not sure if I should be sleeping anyway if I want to keep the jet lag away."

"Don't worry about that." Jensen went up and put his hands on Jared's shoulders. "Nothing else to do right now, and there's gonna be plenty of time to catch up on sleep once we're back. Go ahead and go back to sleep." 

"Mmm." Jared dropped his head to rest on Jensen's shoulder. "Gonna join me?"

Jensen patted the back of his head, threading his fingers through Jared's hair. "In a while, okay? I gotta figure out a good place for us to meet up with Esther."

"M'kay." Turning his head sideways, Jared placed a kiss on Jensen's neck. "You know there's probably people at Ravenswood who can do that, right?"

"No one I trust enough. Not taking any chances this time."

Jared lifted his head and blinked sleepily at him. "I think in any other case, I'd tease you for being a control freak, but right now it just makes me feel good that you're in charge."

Jensen waggled his eyebrows at that, and Jared barked out a laugh. "Maybe later," Jared said, dropping a kiss on Jensen's lips before backing away. "Night," he said, waving over his shoulder.

"Sleep well," Jensen said. 

Then he turned around and squared his shoulders. He had ten hours to find the best place possible and get everything set up ahead of time. He had meant what he said to Jared—he wasn't taking any chances this time.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"You want to meet Esther _where_?"

Jensen looked back calmly at him from across the conference table, a croissant in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. "Santa Monica Pier."

Jared raised his eyebrows. "Are you crazy? What if she tries to blow us up again?"

"She won't." Setting down his coffee cup, Jensen said, "She knows that moving against a couple of foreigners was one thing, but going up against Ravenswood is something else. That's how I know she's been treating Alex and Terry okay, too. She won't try anything, but I want to make it public to emphasize that."

"Not much more public you can get than the Pier," Jared muttered.

Jensen looked at the clock on the wall. "By the time we get there, it'll be about six in the morning. Maybe some joggers, but not much else. Enough to make it public, but not enough to threaten anyone in case it goes wrong."

Jared slouched back in his seat. He'd slept most of the way across the ocean but had awakened when they landed in Maine to refuel. There were still about three hours to go on the way to California, but there was no use in trying to sleep anymore, even if his body clock was going to be screwed up for days as a result. "Okay, so tell me the plan."

"I call her an hour before we land at LAX," Jensen said. "That gives her enough time to get Alex and Terry in the car and on the way, but not enough time to set anything up at the Pier. We land, Liza has a car waiting for us and about four more to follow behind."

Jared nodded. "Then it's what, twenty minutes to Santa Monica?"

"More or less." Jensen took a bite of croissant before going on, "Then Liza and I bring the knife, Alex and Terry come with us, and we go home."

"What do you want me to do?" Jared asked.

Jensen lifted one eyebrow. "Stay in the car."

"What?" Jared stared at him. "If you're worried about Esther trying something, then why are you—?"

"It has nothing to do with her." Jensen reached across the table to put his hand over Jared's. "There probably won't be many people around this early, it's true, and the odds of one of them being someone you used to know are astronomical, but it could happen. You used to live in L.A., Jay, and you're supposed to be dead. We can't risk anyone seeing you."

"Shit." He scrubbed both hands over his face. All this way they'd come together, and he was going to have to sit and watch while Jensen finished things off. If it had to be someone else watching Jensen's back, though, he was glad it was Liza. He'd come to trust her while she'd been guarding them, and he knew she probably wanted to have her partner Terry back in one piece as much as Jensen wanted Alex.

"Yeah, all right," Jared finally said. "Just…be careful, okay? Not that you won't, and not that you won't be a thousand times better with someone who knows what they're doing next to you, but still. Be careful."

Jensen's eyes were soft. "You know what you're doing just fine, Jay. And I'd rather it was you. But it's even more important that you stay safe."

The rest of the flight was an odd mixture of dull and nerve-wracking. Jared wanted it to be _over_ already, wanted them to have landed and have Alex back and be fucking _done_ with everything. At the same time, there was nothing to do—at least nothing that would catch his interest. The plane was equipped with satellite television and Internet, but nothing could keep Jared's attention for long.

The only event of note was when Jensen called him over to the phone. "At least you can listen in," he said, starting to dial.

Jared watched Jensen punch in the numbers and set the phone on speaker. When Esther answered, Jensen immediately said, "Santa Monica Pier. Ninety minutes. We bring the knife, you bring our people."

"I don't suppose you could give an old lady some consideration and keep me from having to drive so far?" was her reply.

Jensen scoffed. "I'm sure your driver can handle it. Besides, you don't have to be there."

"How else am I to confirm that you aren't simply bringing back the replica?" Esther retorted. "No, I will be there. Ninety minutes."

"Glad we understand each other," Jensen said, reaching for the button to hang up the phone.

"One more thing, Mr. Enfield."

Jensen's finger paused over the button, and his eyes narrowed. "Yes?"

"Don't call this number again." With that, Esther hung up.

Jared raised his eyebrows and looked at Jensen. "I don't think she has to worry about that."

"Not in the slightest," Jensen said with a shake of his head.

After they landed, everything went as Jensen had said. The airport was dead quiet, given that it wasn't yet five in the morning. The ride to Santa Monica was as quiet as the journey to Malibu had been only a few days ago, but the quality of the silence was completely different. Jared was holding Jensen's hand across the bench seat in the rear of the SUV, and even if they weren't talking, he didn't feel the weight of the silence between them like he had before. It was a good feeling.

When they rolled to a stop on Ocean Avenue behind another black SUV, Jensen turned toward him, adjusting the small earpiece Liza had given him. "This won't take more than a few minutes." He pointed to the radio receiver clipped to the dashboard. "This will pick up whatever I'm saying. Don't leave the car, okay? Not for anything."

Jared drew in a deep breath. "Unless you're in trouble."

Jensen frowned. "Jay, you can't."

"Don't ask me that," Jared said with a sharp shake of his head. "If you're really in trouble, I'm not sitting here and listening to it, okay?" 

He stared Jensen down, determined not to give in on this. Finally, Jensen shook his head with an exasperated sigh. "Look, we'll be fine. You remember our phrase, right?"

"The Plaça," Jared said quietly. He remembered the nightmare he'd had back home about Jensen using that phrase to try and warn him, and a shiver ran down his spine.

"Hey, it'll be fine." Jensen leaned forward and gave him a quick kiss. "We'll be back in no time."

With that, he slid out of the car, Liza close behind. The second person from Ravenswood, a blonde like Liza but with close-cropped hair, slid over to the driver's side from the passenger seat. Jared thought her name was Kelly, but he wasn't sure. "Just in case," she said, glancing at Jared in the rearview mirror.

"Right," he said, slouching down in his seat. He watched Jensen and Liza walk down the hill to where the pier jutted out over the beach and into the ocean. The sun wasn't up yet, but there was a faint glow in the sky, enough to see the wisps of fog hovering over the beach. The pier was dark and quiet, the Ferris wheel and arcades no longer lit up. 

He remembered coming down here once with Megan. She'd only visited him a couple of times while he'd been in med school, but this had been the most fun. It was hard sometimes with just the two of them on holidays and other occasions when most people had an entire family around them, but there on the pier, laughing and playing arcade games and eating cotton candy, they'd both gotten to take a break from their lives and just be each other's family.

Jared sighed and leaned his head back against the seat. What he wouldn't give to be able to do that again. He wondered if there was even a possibility that Ravenswood or anyone else was going to be able to find the Panther and take him out so that Jared could go back to his life. Or if there was a possibility, how long would it take? Till Megan had a family of her own? Till they were too old to remember each other?

The radio in his hand crackled to life. "They're in the parking lot next to the pier," Jensen said. "One car, four people. Looks like Carl, her best buddy."

"Roger that," said Kelly. "I see their car. No one else in sight."

There were a couple of cars driving past as the city started to wake up, but apparently no one of interest. Jared thought that in another situation, he'd be asking questions about how she knew what counted as "someone else," but right now, he just wanted this over.

"Here we go," Jensen said.

It was weird hearing only one side of the conversation, but Jared could piece it together pretty well. It was indeed Carl, and Alex and Terry were the other two in the car. Jared was surprised that Esther didn't have a whole fleet of bodyguards, but then maybe Jensen had been right about her not wanting to tick off Ravenswood any more than she already had.

She apparently found the knife acceptable, because in no time, Jensen was saying, "No, it won't happen again," and then in a lower voice, "We're coming back."

Jared peered out the window, nervously clasping his hands together. He didn't move a muscle until he saw the four figures coming back up the hill, Jensen with a hand at Alex's back and Liza equally watchful behind Terry. They crossed the street and stopped next to the SUV in front of the one Jared was in. Alex turned to say something to Jensen, and Jensen smiled before pulling him into a quick embrace.

Jared smiled and sat back in his seat. Sometimes, things really did go their way.

A moment later, Jensen was climbing back in the car. "We're meeting up at the safe house in Malibu," he said to Kelly. "Alex wants to talk, but he thought we should get out of here first."

"Sounds good," Jared said, reaching out a hand. He could hardly believe that everything had worked out as easily as Jensen had planned, but he wasn't complaining.

Jensen laced his fingers through Jared's and took out the earpiece, dropping it into his pocket. With a warm smile for Jared, he said, "Then we're going home."


	30. Book 5 (Marseille), Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here we are: the end of this particular line. Thank you so much for your comments and kudos, and watch this space for The Winchester Ultimatum, coming later this year...

It was a clear, crisp December day in central California. The wind was off the ocean, bringing the smells of fish and salt up the hill into town. Jensen sat on the porch and watched the traffic passing by, surprised at how good it still felt to have this place to come back to. There had been so many times in the past few weeks when he'd been convinced they'd never see it again. Now that they'd been back home for a week, it was surprising how much it had settled into his bones.

The front door creaked, and Alex stepped outside, shading his eyes against the low sun reflecting off the distant waves. "Shouldn't Jay be back from his run by now?"

"He's been going for longer runs now that we're back," Jensen said. "I think he likes to be able to go wherever he wants without someone on his tail. And I'm pretty sure he's still got that thing about working out more to keep himself stronger." He held up the phone in his lap. "Besides, he texted me a few minutes ago."

Alex nodded and sank into the porch swing. "It's good that you're always in contact."

"I suggested we wear the earpieces, but Jay didn't go for it," Jensen joked.

"No, I don't suppose he would." Alex had a bottle of beer in his hand, and he took a long swig. "I don't suppose you'd be interested in returning to that, either."

Jensen cocked an eyebrow. "That sounds like a fishing expedition."

Alex took another drink before turning to face him. "How was Marseille? I mean, how was it _really_? You told me the basics in your debriefing, but I know there had to be things you didn't say."

"You drove all the way down here to ask how I'm doing?" 

"I know you swore never to go back to that city," Alex said quietly. "And yet from what you both said in your statements, you agreed to do it without hesitating."

"She had you as a hostage, Alex. I owe you so much…there was no way I couldn't do it."

"Nonsense." Alex shook his head and put a hand on Jensen's knee. "I owe both of you and will be paying that back for quite some time."

He wasn't going to argue that. "Got any ideas about how you're gonna do that?"

Alex pursed his lips. "Depends on you to some extent."

Jensen turned sideways in the swing so he was facing Alex, his interest piqued. "Depends on me how?"

"You did well. All through this, from the moment I showed up on your doorstep." Alex waved one hand toward the front door behind him. "Obviously, you haven't lost your touch."

Jensen shook his head. "I told you I was done, and I still mean that."

"But you're not really. Not as long as the Panther's still out there."

He looked away, stung that Alex thought he needed a reminder. "I think I fucking know that."

"I know, and I'm sorry." Alex let out a sigh. "We owe you, Jon. We owe both of you. It's not like we haven't been looking for the Panther—it's been an ongoing search since he got away in DC, even if it's been running in the background. But I'm telling you that the very next project I'm going to work on, come hell or high water or the President himself calling—is finding Odilon and putting him away for good. And I came down here to ask if you wanted to help."

Silence fell on the porch. Jensen leaned back in the swing and rubbed his hand over his jaw. "Damn." 

"That's also why I wanted to know about Marseille." Alex tapped a finger against his beer bottle. "Because as much as I want to have you in on this, as much as you deserve to be, I don't want to lead you into anything that's going to hurt you or Jared. I've already done enough of that."

"We chose to help. _He_ chose to help, and he'd tell you the same thing if he was here. He's made that clear enough to me."

"So you're not blaming yourself for Sydney?"

Jensen shrugged one shoulder. "Not as much as I was."

"And Marseille? Are you done blaming yourself for that, too?"

He looked up sharply. "When did I ever say that was my fault?"

"You never said it, but it was always clear. I know you cared about Sam a great deal, but to transform your life into someone else's like that, to devote your entire identity to getting revenge…" Alex shook his head. "There was always more driving you than grief."

He looked at Alex for a moment and then leaned forward, propping his forearms on his thighs and letting his hands dangle between his knees. "Grief and guilt, yeah, maybe. But not because I thought it was my fault that Sam died. He made the choice for both of us as to who was going to live. And I was so _angry_ at him for doing that, but I couldn't be angry and be mourning him at the same time, could I? So I…" he made a downward motion with his hands. "I pushed it all into Dean Winchester."

"When did you figure that out?" Alex asked.

"When I was back there in that same goddamn street. I wasn't even trying to go there, at least consciously, but we ended up right there. And Jay was…" A faint smile flitted across his face. "He was everything I needed him to be."

"So it worked out all right for you, going back there."

Jensen nodded slowly. "Yeah, I guess it did. So, you know, thanks for getting kidnapped and all."

Alex snorted. "That's the last time I ever try a plan as risky as that with so little preparation. We're damn lucky, you know that?"

"I know we are." The bark of a dog caught Jensen's attention, and he looked up to see a golden retriever bounding up the street toward them. A grin spread over his face. Sure enough, a moment later, Jared's figure came into view, sweaty hair nearly covering his eyes, still running hard as he charged up the last block of the hill toward their house.

"How has your dog been about having you back?" 

"Oh, Meg's fine. C'mere, girl!" he called out, and he soon had an armful of happy, panting golden retriever. "Yeah, you don't mind being at home rather than at the kennel, do you?" he asked as he rubbed at her head and neck while she made happy dog noises. "But thanks for that. We only intended to board her a couple of days while we were in Sydney, and I have to admit it took me a while to remember the kennel wasn't paid up for very long."

"It's the least we could do," Alex said. There was something in his eyes as he looked at Jensen, something knowing and almost proud, but he leaned back in the swing and didn't say anything.

"Alex!" Jared waved a hand as he reached the steps leading up to the porch before putting his hands on his hips and leaning over, breathing hard. Jensen surreptitiously watched the sweat trailing down his neck and disappearing under his t-shirt. Jared still wasn't entirely comfortable without a shirt, although now that Jensen understood why, he kept the heat on higher in the house to encourage Jared to walk around shirtless. Purely as a form of therapy. 

When he realized Jared was watching him, he flushed and gave the dog one last pat before letting her go. "How was your run?"

"Oh, the usual. The tide's coming in, so there wasn't much hard-packed sand to run on without worrying about getting splashed. And the water's not exactly warm in December, y'know?"

Jensen knew that Jared had to be dying to ask what Alex was doing there, so he put him out of his misery. "Alex just came down to check and see how things are going." 

"Oh, cool. I'm gonna stretch and shower and then come back out and join you, okay?"

"No problem," Jensen said with a wave. "Take your time."

Jared climbed the stairs, taking a slight detour to drop a kiss on Jensen's lips before going in the front door.

To his credit, Alex waited a few minutes before saying, "You're not going to come back and work with us, are you?"

"I won't say I'm not tempted. I mean, I did feel a bit of a rush getting into the museum, and being with Jay again in the field was great, even given the circumstances. We work well together, don't get me wrong. But no, I don't think so. I think someone else needs to do this now."

"You're not going to let Jay make that choice for himself?"

He drew in a sharp breath. "That's hardly playing fair, Alex."

"I think it's being completely fair. Don't turn around and try to protect him now by making decisions for him because you think you know what he'd say. Ask him."

Jensen knew Alex was right, but it hurt to admit it. All he said was, "You'll stay for dinner, right?"

"As your dinner guest and nothing more."

He quirked up the corner of his mouth in a wry grin. "Thanks."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Dinner was a fun, quiet affair. It was the first time they'd had anyone over since they'd been back; Jared still felt like he needed some time to settle in, since it felt like he'd been away for months instead of only a couple of weeks, given everything that had happened. His job at the clinic was secure, since Alex had arranged for him to be on temporary disability leave while he recovered from his injuries, and everyone had been sympathetic to his story of a brutal mugging in San Francisco. He still hadn't felt like having other people around, not while he was getting used to being alone with Jensen again. Still, it had been good to see Alex, both to know that he hadn't suffered any ill effects of his time with Esther's men and because Jared genuinely liked him. 

It did make Jared wonder, though.

The dishes were in the dishwasher, Meg was curled up on her blanket with her favorite bone, and Jensen was at the desk with his laptop. Jared dropped down onto the couch with a sigh. When Jensen turned his head, Jared gave him a pointed look. "So why was he really here?"

To his credit, Jensen didn't try to bluff his way out of it, but shut the lid of the laptop instead. "He had a proposition for me."

"I bet he did." Jared patted the cushions next to him, even though his heart was suddenly thumping in his chest. "Come tell me about it?"

Jensen pushed back his chair and stood up, twisting to stretch his back. "We gotta get a more ergonomic chair."

"Maybe you're getting old," Jared said with a straight face. Jensen wrinkled his nose in reply, and Jared let a small smile creep across his face. At least the tension in the room had dissolved a little bit.

When Jensen sat down beside him, though, Jared could feel the gravity of what he was about to say. "D'you think Sue will keep her mouth shut?" Jensen asked. "Her and whoever else they've got who knows?"

"I can't say I haven't been thinking about it." It had crossed his mind nearly every day since they'd been back, the part of him that wanted to settle in and feel at home warring with the part that warned him not to get comfortable because it could all be taken away in a flash. "I don't see that there's anything we can do about it, though."

"What if we can?" Jensen turned sideways, drawing his bent knee up onto the cushions between them.

"I'm not sure that I know what you mean."

Jensen wet his lips. "We worked well together in Marseille, didn't we?" When Jared nodded, he went on, "Felt a lot better having more resources at our beck and call, too."

"If you're saying it beat being on the run, I'm not going to disagree with you."

The corner of Jensen's mouth quirked up. "No, I suppose not. Thing is, Jay, we could have that. Instead of sitting around and waiting for something to happen, instead of looking over our shoulders all of the time, we could be out there taking care of him."

"Odilon." He hadn't said the name out loud in a long time, and he wasn't surprised to find that it still filled him with dread. 

"That's what Alex wanted to talk to me about. Enough waiting around to see if someone somewhere overhears us or sees us. Enough wondering if someone who knows who you really are is gonna slip up and expose you without us even knowing it. He's prepared to make Odilon a top priority for Ravenswood, with us on board. We can take the fight to him, and we can end this thing."

Jensen's eyes were shining, determination and confidence written all over his face. Jared looked down at his hands in his lap, considering what Jensen said. It was tempting, there was no doubt about that. It had been nice to have people on their side for once, and he could see working with Liza and Terry again. He might not have had nightmares about the Panther for a while, but maybe that was going to change now that they were back at home. Maybe it _would_ be good to be proactive about it.

Then Jared remembered the cab ride to the airport in Marseille and that choking uncertainty about whether Jensen was right behind him or not, and all of the feelings that had come flooding back along with it. He set his jaw and lifted his head. "No."

Jensen blinked. "No?"

Jared drew in a deep breath and spread his hands out over his thighs. "I understand if it's what you want to do. Being the man of action and all that. But it's…I don't know, after everything that happened in Sydney and in Marseille and everywhere in between, coming back here has made me realize that I want to _live_. I want to live with you, Jen. Shit, it's Christmas next week, and we haven't done anything to get ready, but I want to. And yeah, of course I want my old life back, and I want to be able to see my sister again, and I want to not have to worry that the Panther's going to show up when I least expect it, and I do think that I need to find a therapist to talk to, at least to try it out. But I also want to _live_."

There was silence for a moment. Then Jensen put a hand over Jared's, fingers curling around his. "Did something happen that I don't know about?"

"Nothing _happened_ , really, I just…" He turned his hand over so that Jensen's palm was warm against his. "When we were leaving Marseille, and you had me go to the airport by myself. It made me think of the train and almost being separated, and when we _were_ separated and I had to fly back not knowing if I was ever going to see you again. It made me realize that I'm really not cut out for this kind of thing. I'm not Sam. And I know that, and I'm okay with that. Finally." He let out a breath, not looking up from their joined hands even though he could feel Jensen's gaze heavy on him. "The thing is, you're not Dean, either. You're Jensen. And at least for now, I want to live with you and see what that's like, now that we maybe both know a little better who each of us is. And maybe we won't be able to stick with it because something will catch up to us. But at least I want to try and see what happens."

He fell silent, thinking that he'd said more in the last few minutes about his feelings and what he was thinking than he had in the previous few months. He realized how tightly he was squeezing Jensen's hand, too, and he abruptly let go.

Jensen grabbed his hand back just as tightly. "Okay."

Jared cocked his head to the side, taking in the sincerity in Jensen's voice and his eyes. "Okay?"

"Yeah." Jensen gave a small shrug. "I told Alex no, but he told me I should get your opinion, too. Something about not making choices for other people," he said with a roll of his eyes. "I was pretty sure I knew what you'd say, but I guess I didn't after all."

"You thought I would say we should go for it?" Jared asked, furrowing his brow.

"No." Jensen reached up and tucked a stray piece of hair behind Jared's ear. "I didn't realize you'd be so wise about it, though."

"I'm very wise," Jared said, putting his nose up in the air.

Jensen raised an eyebrow in reply, and Jared grinned. Then his face fell, and he turned his head to nuzzle against Jensen's hand, still hovering near his face. "If you want to, though. Go with Alex. I know that you enjoyed it, or some parts of it, and I don't want to make you feel like you have to stay here with me if you'd rather—"

He was cut off by Jensen lunging forward and silencing Jared with his mouth. "Mmmph," Jared got out before he felt Jensen's fingers moving through his hair, and then the noise became more of a moan. 

Jensen drew back, and Jared's eyes were drawn to his lips, shiny and slick. "I want to stay with you, Jared. I want to see what it's like when we're not taking turns waking up from nightmares. And I know they might still happen, but not as much, I think. You seem—" he broke off and rubbed the back of Jared's neck. "You seem different, but better. More confident, I guess."

Jared tilted his head to the side. "It's like...I feel like I made it through, you know? Like something horrible happened to me that I didn't see coming—again—but this time I had people to help me get through it and help make it right. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, you know."

"Wish you didn't have to be so strong," Jensen murmured, apology in his eyes as he caressed the nape of Jared's neck.

He gave a tiny shrug. "Like you should talk."

"Still." Jensen's eyes crinkled as he smiled. "Sounds like something to celebrate."

Jared recognized that dark, seductive tone to Jensen's voice, and he couldn't help the smile that spread over his face. "Yeah?"

"Mm-hmm." Jensen used his hand on Jared's neck to pull him forward into a kiss. "Maybe somewhere more comfortable than the living room."

They went hand in hand to the bedroom, Jensen walking in front down the narrow hallway. Once inside, Jared shut the blinds while Jensen turned on the light in the hall. They'd tried it a few times like this and enjoyed the dim lighting, enough to see each other while still keeping the room dark and possibly even romantic.

"What do you want?" Jared asked, running his hands up and down Jensen's arms.

"Your clothes off."

Jared laughed and pulled back, crossing his arms over his chest to grab his shirt and pull it off. He'd looked himself over in the mirror that morning and was pleased to see any remaining taser marks were only in his head. His skin was marked only by the usual moles, no trace of what had been done to him anymore. Which wasn't to say that all of the traces were gone from his mind, but he knew those would heal with time, too.

Jensen already had his shirt and pants off, and Jared quickly followed suit. They tumbled naked onto the bed together, and the delicious shock of skin on skin filled Jared with the warmth of arousal. "God, you smell good," he muttered, nosing at Jensen's neck before taking his earlobe into his mouth.

"I swear, you sniff me more than the dog does," Jensen growled, but there was a hitch in his breath as Jared nipped at his earlobe, and Jared grinned to himself.

Their hands were busy roaming over each other's skin, feeling familiar places and searching for new ones, and even that simple touch was starting to turn Jared on. His cock was hardening against Jensen's thigh, and when Jensen shifted to roll out from under him, the brush of their cocks together was a lightning bolt of arousal.

"Yeah," Jared groaned, shifting onto his back and wrapping a leg over Jensen's to hold him close. "That feels so good."

"Not half as good as something else we could do," Jensen murmured against his lips. He kissed Jared long and slow, alternating between brushes of their lips together and deep thrusts of his tongue that briefly lost Jared in desire.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw Jensen hovering over him, the light from the hallway door illuminating only half of his face. There was a considering expression on Jensen's face, and Jared drew in a deep breath. He knew what that look meant. "I don't think…" He trailed off and then tried again. "I mean, I'm better, I know I am. But I don't think that tying me up would be a good idea right now."

"Didn't think so," Jensen said with a brush of his lips across Jared's chest, and only then did Jared realize that Jensen's hands were planted beside his head on the pillow. Normally, he'd have them wrapped around Jared's wrists, holding him down and making Jared buck up against him as he kissed and sucked at Jared's neck and shoulders. But he wasn't doing that, was letting Jared move as much as he needed to, and Jared knew that wasn't a coincidence.

He leaned up to plant a hard kiss on Jensen's mouth, knowing that he didn't have to say anything more. "Then what were you thinking?" he asked, letting a hand trail down Jensen's back. 

Tilting his head to the side, he could see their reflection in the mirror hanging on the wall near the foot of the bed, or rather Jensen's reflection, the dips and curves of his strong back and gorgeous ass, the strong thighs, one with the white slash of a bandage still across it. The mirror had been there for quite a while, Jensen's gift to Jared when he realized how much Jared liked watching him move even if he wasn't comfortable turning his back on anyone, even someone he trusted as much as Jared. 

Jensen put a hand on his jaw to draw his attention back to him, or at least to his face. "Something different," he said quietly.

Jared blinked up at him. They weren't into experimentation any more than the typical couple, at least as far as he knew. But he trusted Jensen both to have thought of something that he'd like and to accept it gracefully if Jared said no. "All right. Where do you want me?"

Jensen's eyes darkened, and he gave a languid thrust of his hips so that their cocks dragged together with a sweet friction. "Sit up," he said, drawing back onto his knees. "Bring the lube."

Jared shuffled back until he was sitting upright, grabbing the lube from the nightstand and a strip of condoms. He flipped open the cap and drizzled some onto his fingers, spreading his legs to reach between them, already anticipating the smooth push of Jensen's cock inside of him. 

"No, wait." Jensen reached out and grabbed his wrist. "Prep me."

"Okay." That wasn't anything different, but Jared wasn't going to complain. 

Jensen rose up onto his knees, and Jared did, too, pulling Jensen up against him while he slid his slick fingers down the cleft of Jensen's ass. Jensen shifted to spread his legs wider, hands locking around Jared's hips to hold himself in place.

He kissed Jensen while he circled one finger around slowly, carefully, distracting him from the burn as he started to push that finger in by making little circles with his hips against Jensen's. Jensen was shivering against him as he started to thrust his finger in and out, inching in a little more each time, starting with a second finger the instant he knew Jensen was ready.

Jared was fighting not to just rub up against Jensen's abs by the time he had three fingers inside of him, between the heat of Jensen's body and the slickness of his fingers that was soon going to be matched by his cock. They weren't even kissing anymore, just holding each other close, cheeks pressed together with a rasp of stubble, everything narrowed down to anticipation and want.

Finally, Jensen twisted in his arms and drew back. "Ready?" 

"Shouldn't that be my question?" Jared said, twisting his fingers a little.

Jensen's eyelashes fluttered, the corners of his lips curving up. "Yeah, I think I'm ready." He eased himself off of Jared's fingers and gave him a deep, thorough kiss.

Then, to Jared's astonishment, he turned around and went to his hands and knees, presenting himself to Jared in a way that he'd never done before. 

"Jensen," Jared breathed out. He ran a hand over Jensen's flank, down the curve of his ass and over his thigh. "You—you're okay with this. Having your back to me."

"More than okay." Jensen was watching him in the mirror, head held high and eyes locked on Jared's. "C'mon, you gonna fuck me or what?"

He let out a half laugh and bent to drop a kiss on the swell of Jensen's ass. _God, I love you_ , he thought. What he said out loud was, "Hold your horses." He quickly put on a condom and squeezed more lube onto it, looking at the way the light played over the muscles of Jensen's back, and all of a sudden he was more turned on than he'd been in a long time.

He took a hold of Jensen's hip with one hand and lined himself up with the other. "Ready?" he asked, meeting Jensen's eyes in the mirror.

In answer, Jensen pushed, his back arching in a sinuous line as he slowly started to fuck himself on Jared's cock.

"Goddamn," Jared muttered. He wanted to slow down, make sure that Jensen was really ready, but even in this vulnerable position, there was no question about who was running the show. Jensen's thighs were warm against his, calves a solid line against Jared's legs, and the flex of his shoulders as he arched back and pushed was nothing short of spectacular.

"Yeah," Jensen panted when he was finally seated all the way. He hadn't looked away from the mirror, and now that his ass was flush against Jared's groin, he made little circles with his hips, eyes dark and hot on Jared's. "Think this'll work?"

"Fuck, yes," Jared said, and Jensen gave a throaty chuckle. Jared draped himself over Jensen's back, moving slowly even though Jensen could see everything that he was doing. The mirror made what was usually a less personal position almost shockingly intimate, both of them watching each other as Jared drew back and punched in again. 

Jensen grunted and braced himself more firmly, arms and shoulders rippling in the half-light from the hallway. He met Jared's thrusts, slow and easy at first, and the way Jared could feel Jensen moving underneath him, thighs and ass and back all flexing and releasing, made him feel like they were one body even more than having part of himself inside of Jensen did.

He braced his weight on his legs and one hand, reaching to close his hand around Jensen's cock. Jensen's bitten-off groan was like music, and Jared used the slick that was already wetting the tip to slide around the head, moving his fingers almost teasingly before giving Jensen a firm stroke as he thrust his hips in on another hard thrust.

Jensen's eyes were fever-bright in the mirror, head thrown back and almost quaking in Jared's arms. He panted out, "Yeah, Jared, yeah. God, you feel good. Love you like this, love you inside of me, love to see you like this." He keened as Jared's strokes turned faster, both inside of him and around him. "Love you, Jay. Gonna—"

The word turned into a high-pitched moan as Jensen shuddered and fell apart in Jared's arms. He was so close under Jared that he could feel every tremor that Jensen's body made, every shake as he rode out the wave of orgasm, body clenching around Jared so hot and good. It didn't take more than another thrust or two before Jared was there, too, burying himself in Jensen, mouth opening over the back of Jensen's neck and moaning his climax into Jensen's skin. 

It took a moment for Jared to come back to himself. It was the sweat-slick feel of their skin that did it, that and the sharp smell of sex in the air. His hand was slick with Jensen's come, and he had no doubt that the sheets were going to need to be washed. "Mmmm," he said, nuzzling at the nape of Jensen's neck.

Then he realized he was still draped all over Jensen, probably making it hard for him to breathe. "Sorry," he said, starting to sit up.

Jensen made a protesting noise and reached around to grab Jared's side and hold him in place. "Warm," he said, and the childlike tone of his voice was such a contrast to everything Jared could see and smell that he barked out a laugh. Jensen grinned at him in the mirror, and then they were both laughing, and damn if that didn't feel really good, too.

"Makes me think of Wisconsin," Jensen said when they settled down. "Our first time…you know. We were laughing afterwards. I felt so happy, even if I had no idea what the fuck was going to happen next."

"Yeah." Jared kissed the back of Jensen's shoulder. "Me too. Still don't have any idea, really."

"We'll figure it out." Jensen wriggled a little, and Jared took that as his cue to finally get off of him.

When they were cleaned up and tucked back in bed under fresh sheets, Jared pulled Jensen to him, sprawling across his chest. "What brought that on?" he asked, fingers tracing idle patterns over Jensen's bare back.

He felt the rush of air from Jensen's sigh over his collarbone. "It felt like it was time. I mean, I know there's still good reason to keep my guard up, don't get me wrong." His hand rested over Jared's heart, warm and solid. "But there's no good reason to keep it up around you."

Jared tilted his head forward, breathing in the scent of Jensen's hair. "I love you," he said softly, his hand coming to rest on the small of Jensen's back.

"I love you, too," Jensen replied. He softly kissed Jared's chest and then laid his head down.

The windows were still open behind the closed blinds, and the distant rush of the sea was no louder than Jensen's breathing. Jared closed his eyes and let both sounds lull him to sleep, safe and secure.


End file.
